


Smells Like Roses

by BoMarlowe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Genie/Djinn, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Djinn & Genies, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memory Loss, Minor Violence, Season/Series 05, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:12:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 53,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1914033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoMarlowe/pseuds/BoMarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's life is beautiful. He wants for nothing, has the pleasure of his family and friends, and is desperately, irrevocably in love with his husband. Everything is perfect, just as it should be. </p>
<p>Then he wakes up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Smells Like Roses

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter Song - Smells Like Roses by James Arthur
> 
> Trigger warning for brief mention of infant death/loss. 
> 
> I gladly take constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement. 
> 
> http://bomarlowe.tumblr.com/
> 
> Beautiful artwork for this fic done by InnocentDays can be found here: http://bomarlowe.tumblr.com/post/161317573005
> 
> Check it out and give the artist some love! <3

There’s a distant beeping penetrating through Dean’s muted, languid thoughts. He’s not quite asleep, not yet awake, drifting through some kind of abstract dreamscape that leaves his entire body feeling heavy and numb. His neck burns, but it’s not entirely unpleasant. The tingling heat prickling through his spine and pooling at the base of his skull is familiar, an anesthetizing blanket that warms and soothes the slightest hint of panic swelling in his chest.

Dean moves his fingers first, nails scraping against stiff fabric that barely bends beneath them. He notices then that his mouth is unreasonably dry, almost pasty, his lips parted around slow, noiseless breaths. He can’t tell if he’s extremely hung-over or in the hospital, but years of experience with both tells him it’s probably one of the two. Either that or he’s been kidnapped and sold into the sex trade, waking up on a dirty mattress with hungry-eyed men leering over him like that Liam Neeson movie.

Even zonked out and barely clinging to reality, he can snap out a witty joke or two. Too bad Sam wasn’t hanging around in Dean’s head for that gem.

As consciousness becomes more tangible, Dean senses that at least one of his presumptions is correct. Hunting has honed a particular skill that tells him when he’s being watched, and if the prickling hairs standing at attention all over his body are anything to go on, someone is staring at him right now.

“Dean?” Someone breathes, followed by the tell-tale squeak of rubber-soled boots on linoleum. Hospital, then, unless Dean got drunk in a gymnasium somewhere. He highly doubts it, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

He licks his lips, which is much harder and tastier than it should be. His tongue is slow and thick, practically unresponsive to the commands his brain is shouting at it, but there seems to be a glossy layer of something sweet coating his lips. It feels wrong, and sticky. Dean’s worn his fair share of lip gloss, but only during his evening trysts with sexy little things that get a bit too excited over his mouth. It’s not like he’s going to refuse a kiss just because some chick is wearing fuck-me red lipstick, after all, but it’s become an old habit to clean off his face afterwards for this exact reason.

_Strawberry chapstick_ , he thinks idly, or _maybe it’s watermelon_.

Someone calls for a nurse, and several bodies shuffle near him in an effort to get closer.

Definitely the hospital.

Stupid Sam must have brought him here because he’s too much of a damn wimp to fix Dean up himself. That or something really bad actually happened and he’s merely too drugged out to realize it. He lets his mind reach through the last fleeting memories he can muster - which, as expected, aren’t all that vivid or clear.

At the very least, Dean hopes his little brother ganked the damn Djinn that put him here. And, while he’s letting himself be hopeful, it would be nice if Sam didn’t tease him for needing the back-up he insisted wouldn’t be necessary.

It’s not until someone grabs his hand that Dean considers opening his eyes, and he does so with an almost violent conviction. He half expects, half hopes to see a cute nurse with some cleavage or enough lip gloss to explain the excess on his own lips, but as the blurred edges of reality sharpen and the room around him begins to take shape, it becomes readily apparent that the person holding his hand isn’t a woman.

“Dean,” the man says, awed and a little shocked, “thank God.”

The voice is familiar, deep and rough with worry. He recognizes the tone and the underlying mixture of fear and relief, but it’s off somehow; not making sense. It’s not Sammy’s voice, not Bobby’s or John’s either – not that his dad’s voice would have been comforting, considering he already took the last train to Glory a few years back – but it’s someone he knows, he’s sure of it.

Dean blinks a couple of times, letting his field of vision sharpen and narrow on the figure beside him.

He takes in the man’s features in pieces, letting them fall into place as his brain works out the puzzle.

Dark, ruffled hair. Blue eyes. Lean frame.

Hideous trench coat.

“Cas,” Dean croaks, surprised by the angel’s presence, then by the raspy sound of his own voice, “fuck’s goin’ on?”

A gaggle of people in hospital greens and blues poke and prod at him for a minute, asking him the usual mandatory questions which he rebuffs with practiced ease. One of the nurses smiles at him and assures him the doctor will be in to see him soon. Dean doesn’t say much; the less he says to these people, the better.

“Thank God,” Cas repeats, his voice wavering a bit over the vowels. He pulls his chair right up to the side of Dean’s bed and rests his arms on the guardrails, leaning over and getting right up in Dean’s business. _Personal space_ , he wants to say, because the angel never seems to remember, but then Cas’ fingers make their way to Dean’s hair and it’s too much social awkwardness than Dean can pretend is okay.

“Whoa there, _Peeta_ , don’t go fallin’ in love with me in the line of duty. Close enough,” Dean complains, trying futilely to sit up in the bed. He needs to investigate himself apparently, since he’s still not sure what’s going on and wants to get out of the hospital like _now._ Cas’ expression goes all sad-face and mopey, and Dean can’t help the flit of laughter that makes its way up his throat. Angels aren’t exactly empathetic creatures. “You gonna zap me outta here, Cas? Just heal me when we get out of here or whatever, okay?”

Then Cas is giving him a really strange look; his skin goes pale, his eyes go wide like a cartoon character blinking in the dark, and the fingers running through Dean’s hair go still and stiff.

“What?” Cas asks, more of a breath than a whisper. “What did you say?”

Growing more and more impatient by the second, Dean groans. “I said use your fucking angel mojo magic and get me the hell outta here. The fuck am I doing in a hospital anyway? Where’s Sam?”

“He’s here,” Cas says, tentatively, leaning back in his chair as his eyes narrow, “he should be here in a few minutes, I think.”

“Let’s hope he’s not as useless as you are,” Dean snaps, feeling angrier than he probably should. He squeezes his eyes tight against the setting sun beaming through the unshaded window, wishing the steadily growing pain throbbing in his skull would stop. It’s kind of amazing that he didn’t notice it before, that he didn’t wake with the sharp pulse of pain drumming against the right side of his head.

He lifts a hand on instinct, feeling for the most painful spot on his head that he can palpate with weak, ungainly effort. His body is strangely uncooperative.

Cas looks like someone slapped him across the face. He recoils at the bite of Dean’s words, folding in on himself and biting his lip. Stupid angel should really know by now that nothing Dean says is _personal_ , but come on; Cas is just sitting there like a useless rag doll and not exactly contributing in any meaningful way.            

Then Sam walks in with heavy, thunderous steps. His eyes are a bit wild and his hair is much shorter than Dean remembers it: perhaps he cut it in an effort to look professional for this particular costume. After all, there’s only one doctor who can get away with long hair, cowboy boots, and conveniently timed make-out sessions in broom closets. Sam ain’t him.

“Hey doctor,” Dean says, more sarcastically than he intended, “if I hear you say ‘I told you so’ I’m gonna make you walk to the next case, got it?”

Sam pauses, but barely longer than a few seconds. He exchanges a wary glance with Cas, then starts in with the same crap the nurses were trying to pull. He’s poking and prodding and checking Dean’s vitals like any of it really matters, like he’s actually playing doctor rather than trying to bust them out.

“How are you feeling, Dean?” Sam asks, pulling up a chair and sitting beside the bed. He’s staring intently at Dean’s head, right at the spot where it hurts the most, and it’s starting to make Dean feel self-conscious.

And confused. Mostly confused.

“How am I – no, come on Sam, can we just go please? It’s bad enough that Cas is doing his best impression of the brainless scarecrow,” Dean says, tilting in Cas’ direction. The movement sends another jolt of pain through his skull; Dean hisses and clutches at the sides of his head, groaning at the sudden wave of nausea crawling up his throat.

“You’re not going anywhere, Dean. You had a pretty nasty fall, and quite frankly you’re lucky it wasn’t as bad as it could have been,” Sam insists, scooting closer and flashing a stupid light in Dean’s eyes. Then his massive basketball hands are all over Dean’s head and that’s it.

He shoves Sam away, protecting his weakened bubble. He’s alarmed at how clumsy he feels, how dizzy and violently ill he’s sure he’s about to be.

“Take it easy, okay?” Sam scolds, holding his hands up in defense. “You woke up, and that’s huge. Big victory today, but you’re kind of talking nonsense and we gotta make sure you’re going to be alright in the long run. You need to stay calm so we can check you out, got it?”

Sam keeps eyes narrowed and steadfast on Dean’s, waiting for a reply. When he doesn’t get one, he repeats, “Got it?”

“Whatever,” Dean dismisses, falling back into his hospital bed. He opts for pretending he didn’t hear that waking up wasn’t something they thought Dean was going to do.

He’s probably injured a lot worse than he realized, especially if the lightning strikes bolting around in his brain and the wounded, puppy dog eyes on Cas’ face are anything to go by.

Shit. Maybe that’s why Cas hasn’t done anything to help. Maybe Dean’s got something not even angelic powers can cure.

That’s pretty fucking unsettling.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Sam asks, pulling a clipboard into his lap and clicking the heel of the pen. Dean might be dying of some kind of supernatural disease, but he still doesn’t get why Sam is playing the role of doctor so seriously.

“Not much,” Dean admits, scratching absently at the back of his neck, “Djinn came outta nowhere, knocked the damn blade outta my hand. Everything went blue and then I’m wakin’ up here next to your bright, sunshiny faces.”

“Gin? You were drinking?” Cas says, mouth falling agape.

Dean shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose with a deep sigh. “No, you fucking idiot. _Djinn_. You know, the tattooed assholes who glow and send you to some fancy dream world? Drink your blood and get all pervy on your unconscious body? Give me a break,” he groans, turning to Sam. He expects to find a knowing look on his brother’s face, some kind of acknowledgement that yeah, Cas is being a real pain in the ass, but that’s not what he gets.

Sam is staring at him just as dumbfounded as Cas is, taking little notes on his board with that irritating chicken scratch sound that’s pissing Dean off.

When no one says anything, when the silence and awkward glances become too much, Dean scowls. “What?”

“You fell off the roof, babe,” Cas says, cautious, “you don’t remember? I wasn’t…I wasn’t paying attention, and you slipped and fell. You hit your head so hard, and you wouldn’t wake up,” he explains in quiet detail, tearing up and wiping away the heavy drops that spill.

“What fucking roof?” Dean challenges, then, “did you just call me _babe_?” 

Cas’ chin trembles. There’s a long, uncomfortable pause while Cas tries to keep himself from outright sobbing, but it doesn’t quite work. He rises from his chair, clumsily patting at his trench coat as if looking for something, then heads toward the door. He trips a bit over his own shoes and hitched breath, whimpering and mewling like some kind of kicked kitten, then closes the door behind himself.

“What the fuck is going on, Sam? Jesus, Cas is like Mr. Magoo and you look like daytime soap opera _Moose M.D._ or some shit.”

“Dean,” Sam snaps, and the mood of the room changes to something dark and sour.

There’s a quick flash of blue, a bright light that strips away everything for a bleak second before returning to normal. The room reanimates with a flash, and Sam is still sitting there staring with anger and concern on his face. Did his brother really not just notice the way the world blipped in and out of existence?

“Did you see that?” Dean asks, his hands groping over his own arms and legs, checking to make sure he’s real and not going crazy. “What was that?”

“You have what’s known as a traumatic brain injury, Dean. You hit your head quite hard, and you’ve been unconscious for a couple days. This is why I need you to stay calm. You’re saying some things that are really concerning, and we need to get your brain checked out. You’re confused, and that’s normal, but your memory seems to be…” he pauses, searching his brain for the right word while he rubs his chin, “…off.”

It turns out to be the understatement of the year.

Dean spends the entire rest of the day undergoing a series of tests, mouthing off when he can get away with it and flirting when he can’t. He and his brother have gone through some similar things before, but not quite to this extent. He’d been hospitalized, saved miraculously from death more than once, and even spent a less-than-pleasant 40 years in Hell before waking up in a pine box and having to dig his way out to fresh air and freedom.

He doesn’t know what Sam is getting at, doesn’t know what kind of game everyone seems to be playing, but Dean has had to assume roles much more quickly than this before and it’s all part of the job. Obviously there is something going on that he doesn’t know, and he’s got to follow suit if he wants to make it out of this hospital in one piece.

He’s getting the sense, though, that neither his brother nor Cas managed to kill the Djinn. There’s very little that Dean hates more than an unfinished job, but wearing a hospital gown while going through medical tests like a hamster on a wheel is one of them. Whenever he’s allowed to finally leave, he’ll have to go back and finish the job himself.

With backup this time, though.

Dean’s got a complete diagnosis by the late evening: a mild brain injury they labeled as post-concussion syndrome. Memory loss, nausea, irritability, confusion – the list of symptoms seemed endless as much as it was pointless. He’s got a headache the size of Mount Rushmore and he just wants to get back to his motel room and sleep it off. He doesn’t understand why something as simple as a brain bruise is too much for Cas to cure, doesn’t get why Cas was all meek and in tears a few hours earlier. Maybe there’s something they’re not telling him.

Except Sam and his “team” keep throwing around words like _therapy_ and _recovery_ and _brain damage_ , treating him like some kind of invalid who’s going to need long term care. Cas has wisely stayed out of the way, choosing to sit in the waiting room until Dean was given the green light to go home. That part was kind of confusing too; he’s spent plenty of time in emergency rooms and had more damage to his head than he cares to admit, so he’s pretty sure it’s hospital protocol to keep patients under close watch after something like this.

None of it seems right, actually. The testing went by too quickly, everyone listened to Sam like he was an actual employee of the hospital, and now they’re letting him go home even though he was apparently unconscious for more than 48 hours and only woke up earlier today.

Suspicious, but not enough to stop him from leaving when they hand him the discharge papers.  

҉҉҉     ҉     ҉

It’s not until they pass the first road sign that Dean starts to realize something is up.

Ogallala is not the name of a town he’s familiar with. He’s heard of it, he thinks, but he can’t pinpoint where exactly it is and he knows for sure it’s not where he remembers being last. The Djinn had been hiding in a row of dilapidated buildings in the podunk town of Malta, Montana, just outside of a small lake where the thing had been plucking off campers like berries from a bush.  

They’re not in Ogallala though. That’s where the hospital was he had been in, and they’re heading west towards…somewhere else. They’re surrounded by nothing but vast fields of knee-high corn and spotted cows and horses that don’t mind traffic. Malta at least had the decency to be green and florid, secluded and inhabited by people who kept to themselves.

Sam is driving them all in a piece of shit silver hybrid that makes Dean’s skin crawl. He doesn’t know where they’re going, but Sam assured him repeatedly that his Baby was safe and sound at _home_. Another word that hasn’t made much sense since Dean woke up. There’s no need for code words anymore, no need for secrecy or convoluted conversations that leave him feeling like he’s missing a pretty damn big piece of the puzzle.

He thought all the weirdness and inconsistency was due to Sam’s poor acting skills, but every minute they spend in the car without clarification only seems to redouble the oddness of the situation. Dean remembers the last time he and his brother had to endure the folly of someone who liked to play make-believe, and Sam had been slapped in the face and whammied in the balls for his efforts. His brother can make anyone feel comfortable and open them up like weathered book, a useful tool when they need more information on a case, but throw a trickster into the mix and Sam can’t act to save his own life.

Dean _still_ teases Sam about the genital herpes thing.

Cas is crying like a war widow in the back seat. It’s the single most annoying thing that he’s ever heard, which is fairly amazing considering the crazy number of sounds he’s heard on the job. Rugarus, ghosts, ghouls, Hellhounds, Rakshasas, Wendigos – none of them sounded particularly pleasant, but he’d take any one of them over the sound of Cas’ unbridled tears.

He doesn’t count the noises in Hell, though. Most of which probably came from himself.

“Can you take it down a notch, Cas?” Dean finally begs, scraping tired fingers over his eyes. “For the love of all that is holy, put a cork in it.”

“Dean!” Sam squawks, his eyes bugging out of his skull.

“What?” Dean shouts back, his heart picking up pace, “He’s being ridiculous, Sam, look at him! He’s been weird all day, hasn’t tried to heal me once, and he’s just crying like an idiot.”

“Hasn’t – what?” Sam stammers, gripping the steering wheel tighter until his knuckles are blanched. “Tried to heal you? What does that even mean?” Sam is practically screaming, clearly close to his breaking point as well. He steadies himself with a deep breath, stays silent until he’s turning left into a small farming community, then says, “I’m sorry, I know you’re recovering from the fall and things are still confusing for you, but you’ve been treating your husband like shit from the moment you’ve woken up. This has been hard on him too, okay? Just give him a break and let him come back from the last few days of hell he’s been through. You don’t know how worried we’ve all been.”

Dean’s brain finally does something it hasn’t all day: work.

“Husband?” He questions, darting a glance back at a red faced Cas before dropping his eyes to his own hands.

There’s a ring on his finger that sure as fuck wasn’t there before.

His head throbs and aches with a sudden rush of understanding. Dean’s been through this before, he remembers the strangely lucid feeling he had the first time this happened, the colorful quality of a constructed dollhouse which has no doors or windows through which he can escape.

Dean tries to think back at his time in the hospital, but everything is blurred and only comes in fragmented bits and pieces. They were just there, weren’t they? It’s like trying to recall a dream after waking up, but the details slip and slide between faulty neurons and drift into the void, unreachable and soaked up somewhere in the grey matter. He remembers little pieces of the tests, remembers Sam and his fancy white coat and the wounded look on Cas’ face. He doesn’t remember the spaces in-between, doesn’t remember anything but the highlights like a Hail Mary pass on replay.

“Fuck,” Dean mutters, holding his head in his hands. Everything hurts; each beat of his heart sends another round of raw, vibrating pain up his spine and through each one of his aching bones.

The Djinn must have got him. It’s so obvious now, so blatantly clear that Dean doesn’t know how he missed it. Even his last memory was of being attacked and blinded with blue light – how did that particular tidbit escape Dean’s notice? Why didn’t he see the strange anomalies for what they were?

Except this time, it’s all wrong. Must be some kind of special nightmare genie that sends people into their darkest infernos. Of course, the creature would be no match for the time Dean already spent in old Beelzebub’s sandbox, so naturally it sends him into the second worst thing it could think of.

Married to a weird angel dude, out somewhere in the middle of bumfuck America in a stupid hybrid.

With Cows. Lots and lots of disgusting cows shitting all over themselves and just begging to be tipped.

“For chrissakes, Dean, he was at your bedside the entire time and even kept chapstick on your lips so they wouldn’t dry out. Go easy on him at least, will you? He loves you,” Sam urges, oblivious to the flaring pain and white flags sprouting up all over Dean’s skin, turning down an isolated dirt road just on the other side of the bantam village they passed through.

“Jesus,” Dean moans. He can’t believe this shit is actually happening. He knows what this means, knows that his body is suspended somewhere in one of those old broken down buildings and his real brother probably has no idea where he is. Sure, he told Sam where he was going to be and what he was hunting, but his brother was pretty engrossed in research and may not have been paying close attention.

_Malta_ , he thinks. _I was in Malta and Sam was still forty miles away at the Reservation doing research_.

Dean mocks himself using his best bitch-faced Sam impression, frustrated. “Are you sure you don’t need backup, Dean? You remember what happened last time, Dean? Blah blah frickety blah.”

Sam and Cas both go quiet, watching him warily like they’re not sure whether he’s about to spontaneously combust.

“Don’t worry,” Dean says, glaring at them both as best he can, “you’re just a figment of my drug induced imagination. Not like either of you have real feelings to hurt.”

Cas continues to cry. Sam continues to glare.

In fact, neither of them have anything else to say for the final five minutes of their drive.

Dean does kind of feel like a dick, but he’s more furious and embarrassed than remorseful. He doesn’t know how he could have been so stupid to completely ignore the signs, especially since this isn’t his first time being bent over a table by a Djinn. He needs to figure out where he is, needs to drive back to Malta and kill the son of a bitch so he can wake up and return everything to normal.

No, wait. That’s not right, is it? What did he do the last time?

Dean desperately searches his brain for the answer, does everything he can to delve into the forgotten parts of his memory to find the missing piece, but it’s not there. Was there a spell? Did he have to kill something or pray to Cas?

A violent flash of blue, bright and blinding, then nothing. He forgets what he was thinking about, forgets about Malta and his time in Montana altogether.

After that, he doesn’t notice when other things begin to go missing, too.

Dean shakes his head and rattles it like an empty can, confused and feeling sick to his stomach. He knows there had been something on the tip of his tongue, something he was about to do or say or think, but it’s gone. His head throbs for the umpteenth time and he just wants to sleep or drink or both.

They pull up in front of a battered yellow house trimmed with dirty, dusty white beside a worn down, separate garage. It’s just outside the little town he didn’t catch the name of, alone and guarded by thick lines of leafy trees and a neglected fence he could scale in one easy leap. It’s two stories, has a large bay window jutting out from the right, and is plopped down on enough land that he could probably dig a pool in the yard and still have enough space leftover for a shooting range.

Dean’s not really sure where those thoughts came from, so he ignores them for now.

Sam helps him out of the car, being slow and careful and generous with his time. Dean wants to shove him away again, but something nags him in the back of his mind not to do so. He knows this Sam isn’t real, knows this is all some kind of dream or nightmare or hallucination, but it’s still his brother and Dean’s never really had it in him to be cruel to the guy.

Cas, on the other hand, was just a friend; not even a reliable one at that. Maybe if he’s mean enough to this one, the real angel will pop by for a visit and fly them both back into reality.

There’s an extended ladder leaned up against the side of the house and a toolbox left on the roof. Dean stops to analyze them, feeling angry about their existence, knowing how thorough and elaborate the Djinns can be when it comes to this sort of thing.

“See?” Cas says, edging closer to Dean than he’s dared to be in the last hour, “that’s where you fell.”

Dean just huffs and darts an annoyed glare in Cas’ direction.

The inside of the house is much more beautiful and well-kept. He’s greeted with dark hardwood floors and light blue paint, stainless steel appliances and limestone countertops, and there’s even a flat screen television in the living room mounted on the wall in front of an enormous leather couch.

As much as Dean wants to sit and drool over the amazing detail the Djinn added to make this false world seem more appealing (since the tactics they used with Dean’s family last time weren’t quite as effective) he finds himself helplessly gawking at all the pictures hung on the walls and perched perfectly along every surface.

They’re all of Dean and Cas. Kissing. Holding hands. Getting married. Holding someone’s baby and smiling at the camera. On vacation. Kissing some more.

So many pictures, each different and yet all so much the same. Different times, different locations, but so much love and endearment in each one. The pictures tell an elaborate story of love and commitment and happiness: things Dean doesn’t know anything about, doesn’t remember.

“You were so happy when Leah was born,” Cas tries, letting a small smile creep over his face, “you held her first, right after Sam of course. Begged me for one of our own.”

Dean reaches out and trails a finger over the frame, the one surrounding the picture of Dean holding a fresh little baby with Cas looking down over Dean’s shoulder. It’s simple, sweet, and sends a pang of guilt, sadness, and heartache through his chest. It wraps around his heart and squeezes tight, and this time when the world flashes blue, he doesn’t notice.

“Leah,” Dean says, the name sitting heavy on his tongue. Something about it makes him feel a sense of loss; he knows without asking that the little girl in the picture is gone. “She’s dead?”

Behind him, Sam sighs. It’s heavy and long from practice, a well-worn reaction to the question he’s undoubtedly heard too many times. “Turner Syndrome. Her heart failed.”

A rush of new memories swarms him and clouds his vision; Dean has to take a step back and rub at his eyes, blinking away the sudden fog creeping around his periphery. The single memory of Leah’s death triggers a rush of synapses that alight and flood his brain with more, a domino effect of people and places and things he knows must be false.

Leah’s birth, death, and funeral. The flowers he placed by her headstone every year. Jessica’s refusal to have more children. The year Sam took off work to recover.

Dean remembers them like they really happened, remembers the way each moment made him feel, the way things sounded and tasted and smelled. He had brushed away the tears on his husband’s face with the pad of his thumb when Cas couldn’t decide between lilies or orchids on the first anniversary of Leah’s death. Dean had held his brother for an eternity while Sam cried in the lobby of the hospital, blaming himself for not being able to save her.

Dean had cried too, so much more than he dared in front of his family or friends, curled up on the couch with a glass of whiskey as he tried hard not to forget what it felt like to hold his baby niece in his arms.

“I remember,” he says, unable to refute the new memories blooming over the old ones. He knows this world is fake, knows that the sharp twinge in his heart is a mere symptom of the Djinn’s handiwork, but he can’t ignore how _real_ it all feels either; how _right._

“You do?” Cas asks, hope trickling in over the weakness of his vocal chords, “Sam said being around familiar things would help, you know.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, patting Dean on the back, “they let me take you home ‘cause I’m a doctor and all, but you still have a long way to go.”

Dean’s heart jackrabbits in his ribs. Something is scratching just beneath the surface, something relentless and nagging and so damn insistent that he can’t ignore it. He’s got to get out of here as quickly as he can. He’s got to leave and go back to…to…

Wherever he’s supposed to be, it’s not here. He has to find a way out of this nightmare before he gets lost in it.

“No,” Dean says, but there’s no conviction behind it. He’s not even sure what he’s denying, not sure what it is he doesn’t want to happen, but the fear and panic is swelling so rapidly that he thinks he’s going to burst. He searches his mind for the third time and comes up empty handed: he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go, and can hardly distinguish between which memories are real and which ones are just in his head.

“Just think about it logically, Dean,” Sam says, guiding him toward the dining table to sit down. Cas brings him a glass of water from the kitchen, and they sit on either side of him like bars around a cell. He’s trapped, caged like an animal between two imaginary people and there’s nothing he can do about it. “You keep saying we’re not real, and a bunch of other stuff that hasn’t made any sense, but look – you remember Leah, right? Don’t you think it’s possible that if you try hard enough, you’ll remember other things, too?”

Dean looks at his brother, _really_ looks at him, and he gets the creepy sense that it’s not actually his own mind that’s coming up with this stuff.

It’s like the Djinn is speaking to him directly, telling him to accept his fate and give the fantasy world a try.

“You’re not real,” Dean insists, knocking back the glass of water with one swig. “My brother’s gonna come gank your ass and then I’ll be back to my old self. I’ve dealt with your kind before and there’s no fucking way I’m letting you trick me again.”

Sam’s eyes narrow and hone in on Dean’s, black pinpoints of focus burning into his flesh. “We’ll see.”

Before Dean can comment on how disturbing that is, Cas reaches out and takes his hand, gently, smoothing his fingers over Dean’s rough skin.

A second flood of memories, tinged with blue and sunny bright, sprout in the empty spaces of Dean’s mind and fills them.

The first time he held Cas’ hand. The way his perfectly nimble fingers feel slicked with oil as he rubs out the knots in Dean’s back, how they smell of citrus and mint after he makes lemonade, the tingle of warmth they leave on Dean’s skin when he traces the cupid’s bow of his lips.

The undeniable happiness Dean felt when he slipped the gold band onto his husband’s finger.

He blinks, confused and overwhelmed.

Dean can’t miss what he doesn’t know is missing, can’t tell that there are gaps where there used to be images of his real life. They flit away with the subtle silence of butterfly wings, one by one, so slowly that he doesn’t realize it’s happening.  

And yet so quickly that he puts up no resistance when Cas wants to take him on a tour of the house.

By the time the tour is over, when he’s seen and touched every piece of the faded yellow house, all memories of the life he had before are gone.

His entire world has been reduced to the small Midwestern town, the man guiding him carefully to bed, and the heavy gold band wrapped tightly around his finger.

҉     ҉     ҉ 

“I don’t think so,” Dean says, trying to subdue his laughter, “just because I have brain damage doesn’t mean you can pull one over on me _that_ easy.”

“I swear!” Cas insist, giggling, wrapping his legs around Dean’s, “I’m on top, you’re on bottom, that’s just how it’s always been.”

It’s been about a week, give or take a few days, and most of the world Dean lives in has been constructed beautifully and without flaw. His life is charmingly simple, easy to navigate, and with Cas by his side helping him trudge through the bits of confusion and loss, he’s made incredible leaps of progress.

They live in the small town of Big Springs, Nebraska; born and raised, corn fed and home grown. He’s married to his high school sweetheart, has been since the month they both turned eighteen and hasn’t had any regrets since. They moved into the cute yellow home just outside of town after the death of Cas’ parents, fixed it up just how they like it, and spend most of their free time fucking like a couple of horny, Viagra-fed rabbits.

Not since Dean’s head injury, though. Cas has been cautious to guide him through the process carefully and slowly, reintegrating him at the pace Dean sets for himself.

It’s only been a day since Dean touched the soft jersey knit fabric of their sheets and remembered a multitude of nights he’d spent getting fucked raw into the mattress, from their very first time on their honeymoon to the morning Dean had fallen off the roof, when he’d waggled his eyebrows at a still-sleepy Cas and sweet-talked his way into his husband’s green, plaid boxers.

Dean thinks he’s ready, _feels_ ready, but even armed with the rock-solid memories of his reluctance to top, he still gets the sense that something is off about it. Every now and again, he feels the seed of doubt germinate and attempt to bloom into more, but he pushes the nagging uncertainty aside and allows his husband to reassure him of the truth.

This is the first time that the seed made its way past infancy and grew roots, clenching tightly to Dean’s spine and sending wave after wave of panic and unease to his brain. _You’re not gay,_ it says, though the strength of the tendrils growing upwards make it feel more like a scream. _You don’t love Cas_ , it shouts, over and over again. _This isn’t real_.

“It’s just because you’re scared,” Cas says, gently kissing Dean’s forehead with soft, chapped lips. “This is a big step, and we don’t have to take it yet. Whenever you’re ready.”

“So, I’ve never topped? Not once?” Dean jokes, because he knows there’s so no such event in his memories. He’s already searched them once, twice, and ten more times after that to be sure.

“What can I say,” Cas laughs, trailing languid fingers over Dean’s thigh, “you’re a bottom, and an enthusiastic one at that.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Dean challenges, nipping at Cas’ ear. He has no specific memory of doing so before, but he can tell it’s a practiced move, one he’s done before many times without reservation.

Cas doesn’t respond to that particular jest, not exactly. He sighs, pulling Dean a little closer despite the lack of space between them. Dean can feel through his own boxers that Cas isn’t hard, isn’t pushing for something Dean probably isn’t ready for, but there’s a steady hum of energy flowing around them – he can feel it. He’s filled with want, undeniable desire, but Cas’ mind has roamed elsewhere.

“You okay?” Dean asks, his eyebrows knitting together with concern and worry. Cas has taken on a weak, humbled expression, one that makes Dean feel a little scared and insecure. Did he do something wrong?  Did he say something offensive?

Cas sucks in a sharp breath, squeezing his eyes shut as his fingertips dig into the sensitive flesh of Dean’s hips. He knows from experience that this is Cas’ way of trying not to cry, he remembers with sudden clarity all the years of his husband doing the exact same thing during moments of emotional turmoil or family crisis. Cas is warm, sweet and sensitive, and never had much of a wall to protect himself from the cruelty of the world.

“You came back to me,” Cas whispers, sniffling a bit in the silence, “When you woke up and had no idea who I was, I thought I had lost you forever. I thought you’d never look at me and see _me_ again.”

Dean’s heart skips a beat, just as romantic and cliché as every rom-com his husband begged him to watch in the late hours of the evening before bed. He looks at Cas with longing, with love and fright and such a powerful empathy that it hurts. Dean only vaguely recalls those early days when he first came home, even though it was barely a week ago, but he does remember all the times he left Cas in tears when Dean couldn’t remember something; when he thought the final fleeting memories of his brain damage were still real.

“Not gonna leave you,” Dean says, keeping his voice as merciful and calm as he can, “I’m nothing without you, you know that? Can’t get rid of me that easily.”

Cas laughs, Dean smiles.

There’s a beat of silence, a moment when there’s nothing but the two of them touching and exploring and caressing, then, “I know babe, I know. Never letting you go.”

It sends a chill down Dean’s spine, one that feels more like a warning than excitement, but he pushes the unease aside and presses his lips against the softness of his lover’s, sinking deeper into the beautiful life that surrounds him.


	2. This Charming Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Charming Life - by Joan Armatrading
> 
> Unbeta'd, so pointing out errors is always appreciated (of which I am certain there are plenty).

“Got it!”

Dean is an agile runner, swift and adept in ways his little brother is not. Sam may be taller with the wingspan of a Boeing, but he’s also a bit lanky and uncoordinated, built for power rather than endurance. Dean uses that to his benefit, darting in front of Sam with nimble ease and plucking the Frisbee from midair. The naked pads of his feet dig into the cool bed of grass as he stops and turns, flinging the cheap plastic disc back across the field.

“Fuck you, Dean,” Sam pants, leaning forward with his hands resting on his knees, catching his breath. He tugs on his sweaty t-shirt to get some air flow between the cotton and his flesh, but it does little to alleviate the heat. Dean still doesn’t get why Sam is such a Nervous Nancy when it comes to being shirtless ( _skin cancer is a real thing, Dean!_ ) but he doesn’t mind playing on opposite teams for this very reason. Kicking Sam’s ass in front of other people is pretty much what Dean lives for.

“Giving up already?” Ryan jokes, using his own t-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face before playfully shoving at Sam’s shoulders. Winded and caught off-guard, Sam tips like the tree that he is and falls to the ground, letting his body limply unfold on the grass.

Dean takes advantage of his brother’s distracted state to drag the back of his hand across his forehead, whistling at the bright, unrelenting heat. Early July in Nebraska means ninety degree weather with only the occasional thunderstorm to punctuate the relentless sun, but tradition demands he and Cas run around shirtless catching spinning discs from the air and drinking lukewarm beers from a lucky cooler that hardly works. Cas insists the old decrepit piece of crap somehow magically keeps them from getting sunburnt, but Dean suspects it has more to do with the three layers of sunscreen they rub on each other before heading out.

Three, obviously, because they can never seem to stop touching each other regardless of the occasion.

Speaking of their mild case of co-dependency, Dean turns to watch Cas take a long swig of beer, head tilted back and Adam’s apple bobbing in a slow, sultry rhythm.

Cas is a natural born runner, lean with the endurance of a hundred men and superhuman stamina. He was built for this game, and if it weren’t for the fact that he and Dean were always on the same team, Dean would probably have to learn how to be gracious loser. Ryan just likes to play for fun, doesn’t care too much about who wins or loses, but Sam has a competitive streak a mile wide and can’t accept a loss without flashing his patented bitch face.

Cas, though, is gracious in all things. Dean’s never known another human being so diplomatic or forgiving, so he knows without a doubt that he can surprise Cas with a little something and have it play out rather nicely.

Dean lightly jogs over to where Cas is standing by the cooler and slips up behind him soundlessly, waiting for him to drop the beer from his lips. When Cas finally stops drinking and bends over slightly to set the beer down, Dean seizes the opportunity and leaps up onto Cas’ back, wrapping his arms tightly around his husband’s shoulders.

“Hey!” Cas complains, stumbling forward a few steps before regaining his balance. His arms naturally make their way around Dean’s thighs, keeping him steadily in place. “Carousel’s over, pal.”

Dean laughs, unremitting, kissing the side of Cas’ face. “Well that hardly seems fair,” he whispers, lips tight against the shell of Cas’ ear, “I just got on and I want to _ride_.”

“Dean!” Cas laughs, blushing a beautiful dark red and darting his eyes around the park, “not in front of Ryan.”

“Ryan, huh?” Dean challenges, kissing Cas’ tanned, lightly freckled nape, “does that mean you don’t care if Sammy sees? Should I be jealous?”

Cas adjusts Dean’s weight on his back, then walks a little closer to the tree line between the park and the road. Dean loves the way Cas’ hips feel shifting and moving against his thighs, the way his husband carries him so effortlessly without complaint. He’s shorter than Dean, just barely, but no less strong or formidable for it. On the growing list of things that Dean simply can’t get enough of, Cas’ well-muscled body is probably somewhere near the top.

Then, as if he read Dean’s private, self-serving thoughts, Cas throws him over his shoulder and flips him down onto the ground like some kind of kung fu master. He hits the ground hard, the sound of sun-dried grass crunching lightly beneath his back before Cas straddles him a second later, barring his hips between iron-tight legs that keep him pinned firmly in place.

Cas’ eyes dip just below the elastic waistband of Dean’s shorts, his brows perking up in question and interest at the obvious bulge he finds there.

Nah, Dean’s not turned on by his husband _at all_.

“Sam’s not really my type,” Cas intones, leaning forward and pressing their lips together. Cas means it to be chaste, he’s sure, but Dean coaxes his lips open within a matter of seconds, claiming Cas’ mouth with little nips and a sense of sudden urgency.

“Uh,” Sam mumbles somewhere in the distance, the sound of his footsteps growing louder but slower, “Ryan and I are gonna take off, you guys want to come? Thinking of going to the station to play some cards with the guys.”

Dean refuses to stop what he’s doing just because his little brother is trying to interrupt, but Cas pulls away with a shy smile the moment Dean gives him enough control over the kiss. He groans, one part pissed and two parts selfish, but lets Cas wave them off with a polite dismissal.

“Just be careful. Dave’s on patrol today,” Ryan groans, loathsome of the only cop in the area. “You should come by the house soon, Cas. The kids have been bustin’ my balls asking when they’re going to see you again.”

Cas smiles through a humbled laugh, rising from Dean’s lap so that he can pat Ryan on the shoulder. “This weekend?” Cas suggests, looking back down at a flustered Dean with a shrug, “Or you can bring the kids to our place, if you and Jen need a date night.”

“Yeah, man, that would be awesome,” Dean agrees, reaching up to take Cas’ hand and letting himself he pulled upwards to his feet. “Bring ‘em on over.”

Dean puts a casual arm around Cas’ waist, letting his fingers rest gently over the sweat-damp skin there, playfully pinching ever-so-gently in a way they that signals Dean is definitely _in the mood_. He tries to pay attention to what the guys are saying after that, but every once in a while his brain acts up and wanders away, getting lost and slowing down like an errant sheep put to pasture.

It’s not just that he can’t focus sometimes, though. Sometimes (more often than he’s willing to admit around Cas, because he blames himself so much) Dean gets strange sensations, or sees things that aren’t really there; his memories get all jumbled up, and pieces of himself get lost in the crosshairs.

Sam wasn’t kidding when he said Dean was going to need therapy, or maybe even rehabilitation for his brain injury, but he tried that route for the first year after his fall and it never did any good. He can still take care of himself, can still take care of Cas, and that’s all he really needs to do anyway.

When Dean’s mind finally circles back around, Cas is giving him a hangdog look of sadness and confusion. Sam and Ryan are long gone, Cas has gathered most of their things and put them in the car, and Dean was apparently running on autopilot.

Cas, God bless him, has learned to recognize these periods of Dean’s mental absence. He doesn’t give Dean a hard time, doesn’t shake him or force him back into reality until he’s ready, he just lets the moment run its course and greets Dean back with warm, welcome arms.

Doesn’t change the fact that it still hurts Cas to do it, that he still blames himself for the fall in the first place. Dean hates himself for having those moments of weakness, hates that his brain is fucked up in some irreparable ways that will haunt Cas until the day he dies, but nothing Dean can say or do will ever change his mind. He’s convinced it’s his own fault, won’t let the blame slide anywhere else, but it’s not like Dean really knows for sure anyway. The entire day of the fall is still lost somewhere in the gray matter of his mind.

Normally, once Cas realizes that Dean has returned to reality, he clears the remorseful expression from his face and puts on a false grin of happiness. Dean’s barely caught Cas’ look of shame and sorrow before it’s gone, before Cas wipes it away with practiced ease and gives him a kiss or a broad, unfettered smile. But now, Cas still looks like he’s miserable, like something equally terrible may have happened without Dean even realizing it. Cas’ hands are limp on the steering wheel, uncommitted, and he’s staring off through the windshield at nothing in particular.

It’s a far sight from the sexy, sweaty man Dean just had on him a short while ago; from the sweet, chapstick covered lips that sucked and pulled on Dean’s mouth as they laid in the grass.

“You okay?” Dean asks, dropping a hand to Cas’ knee and rubbing his thumb in small circles.

His husband takes a long, weary breath, then shrugs his shoulders. “Why don’t we have children, Dean?”

The question catches him off-guard. He’s not really sure how to answer, mostly because it wasn’t something they’ve talked a lot about. They’ve never discussed it at length, never agreed on anything for or against it, but it would be a lie to say that it wasn’t something Dean wanted.

He loves kids, always has, but being in a relationship with another man limits those kinds of possibilities in ways most couples don’t have to face. He remembers holding Leah in his arms, remembers falling in love with her the moment she opened her little eyes and smacked her lips at him. He had begged Cas that night for a chance at fatherhood, begged him to start looking into adoption or surrogacy so they could start a family of their own.

But then Leah had passed, and the magic of fatherhood got lost and buried along with her little, helpless body.

He didn’t want to imagine what it would be like to have one of his own go in such a way, what it would be like to be Sam during those first few months of loss. He was such a wreck, such a broken, fragmented soul that the very idea of fatherhood scared Dean shitless. Sam was one of the strongest people that Dean has never known, and he knows his own constitution is nowhere near strong enough to endure such a traumatic experience.

Dean doesn’t want to hurt Jessica, either; doesn’t want to make her feel inferior or remind her of the terrible loss she suffered so early in life.

Leah’s syndrome was rare, that much is true. It would be silly to expect a similar experience, to think that any child of his would suffer like she had, but it was still enough to put him off the idea.

“I don’t know,” Dean answers honestly, attempting to lock away his fears of infant death or unpredictable syndromes, “I want some, though, if you do.”

He says it honestly, earnestly, and gives Cas the full scope of his wide, eager eyes.

Dean wants kids, yes he does, but he can’t do it without Cas or Sam.

“We’ve been married fifteen years, Dean; together for twenty. Ryan and Jen have only been married for six and they have two kids already. Sam and Jess had only been together a few years before Leah was born,” Cas says, building up to his point, “We’re ready, right?”

He looks at Dean with such an intense combination of pleasure and pain that it’s unbearable: pleasure at the thought of finally being a father, of having the all-American dream with his soul-mate, but mingled with a pain that can only come from the absence of that desire, from the idea that he might never get what he wants so badly.

“Yeah,” Dean says, trying to sound as reassuring as possible, “I mean, if you really want to have kids with a guy that’s got a fucked up brain, sure.”

Cas sucks in a sharp breath, then shakes his head. “You don’t want kids?”

“I do, I do,” Dean insists, scooting closer and draping an arm over Cas’ bare shoulders, “but, sometimes it seems like you have enough on your plate with just me. What if I’m too fucked to raise kids? What if you resent me for not being able to help more?”

Then Cas does what he always does when he gets too emotional: he cries.

“Shit,” Dean mutters, cupping once side of his husband’s face and brushing away a stray tear, “I’m sorry, babe. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Cas says, stopping Dean from saying anything further. He leans over and lets his head fall onto Dean’s shoulder.

Dean can’t help but notice the beautiful contradiction that his husband is: so masculine and strong, tanned skin and dark hair with striking blue eyes and sharp, witty humor – but get him alone and open him up, and you’ll see his insides are made with Build-a-Bear fluff and an oversized heart sewn to perfection.

“I would never resent you, Dean, that’s the point,” he starts, sniffling between the words, “twenty years is a long, long time, and I’ve never been anything but happy with you, never regretted you for a single moment of my life. If anyone deserves kids, it’s us, right? And you, Dean – you’ve never been a burden, not once. You’d make such a great dad, and it’s been, what, three years since your fall?” Cas takes a slow breath to calm his rapid heart, getting himself under control. “I want to do this, before we’re any older. I want a real family.”

Dean has to bite his tongue from correcting his husband; he wants to insist that they are a real family and that children don’t define a relationship, but he knows what Cas means and the argument would be pointless. Cas wants every experience, wants to have a family and wants proof that he and Dean were in love and wildly mad for each other for brief moment in history. He wants to pass on his knowledge and quirks and fixations to little human beings that will one day grow up and have children of their own.

Heh, grandkids. They don’t even have children yet and already he’s thinking about spoiling those munchkins.

“So let’s do it,” Dean says, kissing Cas’ cheek, “let’s adopt a baby.”

҉     ҉     ҉

Dean startles awake, gasping for air. He’s bitten by the sharpness of the cool air against the beads of sweat making their way down his chest and shoulders, his skin pebbling and reluctant to move.

Another nightmare. Fuck.

Cas is awake in an instant, reaching around in the dark until his hands on are Dean’s skin and gripping him tightly, keeping him anchored to reality and smoothing over the goose-bumps that claim Dean’s flesh. For a moment, all Dean can smell is the scent of lavender and vanilla, some frilly crap that Cas buys and insists will keep Dean calm during these fleeting moments of panic.

It doesn’t work, it _never_ works, but the thought of Cas feeling like a failure or knowing his ideas don’t pan out are enough to remind him to center himself, to take a few deep breaths and focus. It wouldn’t do any good to have Cas panicking too, to have him just as scared and disoriented as Dean feels.

“Dean,” Cas says, his hands finding Dean’s face and pulling him close, “shhh, it’s okay, you’re okay.”

He knows he’s okay, that’s not the problem. It’s never the problem, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell Cas that, doesn’t have it in him to tell Cas that he’s wrong about anything. Dean knows things are okay once he wakes up, he doesn’t think he’s still in danger or that Cas would ever let anything happen to him, but the nightmares are usually so strong and convincing and powerful that he can’t get the images out of his head; can’t forget them and move on. They’re about Sam, or Cas – always, never about anyone else. How can he just ignore the things he’s seen in his head? He knows they’re false, knows that once he’s awake those dreams can’t find him anymore, but it doesn’t help.

Sam drinking blood. Cas flying away with a pair of invisible wings and leaving him to fend for himself. Sam getting involved with demons. Cas not answering his prayers.

Dean doesn’t know how to explain the dreams any better than he can try to fruitlessly understand them. He’s not sure what the symbolism is, doesn’t understand the mechanics of dreams well enough to decipher the secret code within. Cas seems to believe that it means he’s afraid of his brother leaving him, that Dean’s somehow secretly scared that Sam will fall in with a bad crowd and get swept away by the unknown. Dean’s not sure he believes that, doesn’t know why he would fear something that would never happen.

The only time Sam ever left Big Springs was to go to college and eventually medical school, but everyone knew he was leaving on a scholarship and he came back as promised with a medical degree.

He seems to think that Dean’s imaginings of Cas fluttering away with angelic wings is more symbolic than his nightmares of Sam. Perhaps Dean sees Cas as so perfect that he’s practically an angel, and Dean feels like he’s not good enough, like he can’t compare, and he’s afraid Cas will fly away and never return.

“I’ll never leave you,” Cas whispers through the dark, planting kiss after reassuring kiss on Dean’s temple. “I’ll love you until the day I die, Dean Winchester, and maybe even longer than that.”

He believes his husband; God, does he ever.

“Love you,” Dean says, rolling into Cas’ embrace and allowing himself to be held. “Don’t go.”

These nightmares never happened before the fall, and Sam did say that nightmares or delusions could be a residual effect, but it never makes waking up with those images in his head any easier.

“Of course not,” Cas says, used to issuing that same response every time Dean wakes up like this. “I’m here, babe. Just close your eyes and try to fall back asleep. I won’t go back to sleep until you do.”

Dean’s never sure if he believes that, if a sleep deprived Cas is even able to make such a promise and keep it, yet time after time he proves that he means what he says and Dean never fails to appreciate it. He has no idea what he would do without his husband, what he would do if he ever woke up without Cas by his side.

It scares him for a moment, all the ways he could lose Cas so quickly or suddenly, especially all the ways he could die in which Dean wouldn’t get a chance to say goodbye.

Car accident. Being mugged. A sudden heart attack or stroke.

Flapping away on stupid invisible wings he knows could never be real.

“Love you,” Dean repeats, needing to Cas to hear it again, “love you so much.”

“I know,” Cas whispers, lips brushing against Dean’s flushed cheek, “love you too, always.”

He takes comfort in the admission, knowing his husband would never lie to him. They’ve been together so long that they can read each other perfectly, that they know each other’s intentions with a simple analysis of their expression or stance. Cas has never lied to him, has never let him down, and he knows he can trust without a doubt everything that comes from between those sweet, pearly pink lips.

Dean takes a long breath and huffs it out slowly, trying to control his racing heart. They’re just nightmares, just products his faulty wiring system sending skewed signals all over his brain, and he knows it.

If only he could convince his heart and nerves of the same thing, he’d be golden.

҉     ҉     ҉ 

When their son is born, Dean cries.

He’s perfect, unbelievably so. His hair is raven black and he screams with the strength of ten lungs; a perfect, noble warrior. Dean can see it now: he’s an astronaut, a plumber, and singer songwriter, a vagabond. He’s anything he wants to be, and everything he doesn’t. Their son is perfect and beautiful and healthy, and Dean’s heart couldn’t possibly be fuller than it is now.

They name him Jeremy; Jem for short.

It was pure luck that brought them by Jem’s biological mother, a sweet young high school girl with no idea how to raise a child and no desire to learn how. She had hoped to find a deserving couple for her child, had hoped to place her boy in the arms of two people who loved each other enough to stand the test of time, and destiny placed them each other’s path in the middle of the canned food aisle at Walmart.

Dean knew it was meant to be in that aisle, just like he knows it was meant to be as he holds his little boy in his arms.

He runs his fingers through the soft down of newborn hair, amazed at how long and thick it is compared to every newborn he’s ever seen, including Leah. Jem is perfect, completely and undeniably faultless in every way. His eyes are a misty dark blue, a trait of most newborns according to the nurse, and it could take a few months to see their true color.

Dean doesn’t care. He’ll wait as long as it takes. He’s got a lifetime with this baby boy, years to learn his son through and through until he graduates high school and takes off for college just like Dean knows he will.

Sammy’s his uncle, after all.

When they take him home from the hospital, a completed nursery awaits him. The room is painted gold and green, neutral and refined, just like Cas wanted. Jem’s bedding is white and clean and folded, ready for an infant to snuggle up and fall asleep and snore safely through the night.

But neither he nor Cas can be away from, they discover. It’s too hard being in a separate room or even a separate bed. Anything could happen to him, from SIDS to a bloodthirsty eagle swooping down into his room looking for something to feeds its young. Improbable, yeah, but neither he nor Cas can leave that kind of thing up to chance.

The first night, neither of them get any sleep at all.

Jem is fussy baby, crying every couple of hours, but neither Dean nor Cas really mind it. They couldn’t sleep anyway, choosing instead to stay awake so they could watch their baby’s face while he slept and snored and cooed over his little infant dreams. They ran their fingers through his hair over and over, loving the way Jem’s hair felt like silk in their hands, the way he wriggled ever so slightly with each stroke like he couldn’t get enough of it.

His diapers, though, we’re quite the learning process.

Cas took Jem’s very first diaper in the hospital. Meconium, they called it, thick and dark and almost tar-like. Cas seemed to handle it with ease, like he was a natural with diapers just like he’s natural with everything else. Dean struggled a bit with the first diaper their son needed at home, but mostly due to Jem’s uncontrollable bladder. He peed all over Dean’s face, then his own face, and Cas made the executive decision to invest in a handful of ‘pee pee teepees’.

Dean sends a thankful prayer to whoever invented the things, because taking a shower after every diaper change was getting a little old.

Cas has never been happier; he’s perpetually smiling and laughing, completely and utterly entranced with every little thing Jem does. Even his tiny infant farts had become a source of humor and laughter for his husband, who’s been determined to capture every millisecond of their son’s life on camera.

Dean almost can’t decide which one he loves to watch more; his beautiful, growing baby boy full of energy and curiosity, or the way his husband lives and breathes to serve their son and make their family perfect.

҉     ҉     ҉

When he wakes in the middle of the night, it’s not from a nightmare. A small mercy these days, but a mercy nonetheless.

Dean can’t sleep. Jem is having a sleepover at Ryan’s house with the other boys, and though he knows his son is in good hands, he can’t help but worry and feel a little empty inside.

He rolls out of bed carefully, slowly; no need to wake Cas up, not when it took his husband so much longer to fall asleep for the same reason. Cas sometimes gets in the habit of acting like a mother hen, or one of those helicopter parents that just hovers and watches almost constantly. He doesn’t do it on purpose, doesn’t mean to be so overprotective or watchful, but losing Jem or even him just getting hurt makes them both feel sick to their stomachs.

Dean pads into the bathroom to give his face a quick wash, hoping it will relax him enough to fall back asleep. He closes the door silently behind him, then flicks on the light and goes to the sink. Their bathroom smells like mangoes or maybe something Hawaiian, whatever new scent Cas picked out the store. He still insists after all this time that it will help with his nightmares, that it will keep him calm when he startles awake, and Dean still doesn’t care enough to correct him.

He looks in the mirror and takes in his reflection in pieces. He’s tired, a little pale and not as buff as he used to be. Silver highlights his hair and stubble, and though Cas insists it makes him sexier, Dean is reluctant to agree. He’s thirty-eight going on thirty-nine, then forty is right around the corner and he’ll be old and fat and bald.

Dean looks at the old scar on his forehead. It’s not so much of a scar as it is a permanent bruise, but he’s not sure what to call it. It’s a circular patch of skin that’s darker than the rest, kind of like a birthmark, planted near his temple just above his right eyebrow. It’s where he hit his head when he fell, an unending reminder of how he almost lost his life; a torturous sight for his husband, too, who hates looking it more than Dean does.

On Jem’s fourth birthday, one his little friends had pointed at it and asked Dean what was wrong with his face.

The look on Cas’ face had been heartbreaking.

Dean lazily trails a finger along the edge of darkened skin, mapping it out for the millionth time. He doesn’t like seeing it, but sometimes when he’s feeling down or frustrated, it reminds him of how far he’s come and how lucky he is to be alive. Had he fallen any differently, had he landed harder or more squarely on his head, he might not even be here right now. Dean would have died and left his high school sweetheart all alone, would have been one more person for his little brother to bury before their time.

He wouldn’t have Jem, either; wouldn’t have been a father to the most perfect, precious human being to ever walk across the earth.

The doorknob turns, and Cas peeks his head in with tired, half-lidded eyes. “Come back to bed, Dean.”

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees, turning on the sink and splashing some water on his face. He doesn’t expect Cas to still be standing there when he lifts his head, perched beside him on the countertop looking sorry for himself.

Dean doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask why Cas looks so heartbroken. He already knows.

“I should have been paying better attention,” Cas mumbles, reaching out the caress the right side of Dean’s face, “I shouldn’t have let you fall.”

“Stop,” Dean insists, leaning into the touch and kissing Cas’ palm, “wasn’t your fault.”

“You told me to stay close in case you lost your balance, but I was selfish and wanted to see the sunset from the other side of the roof. How is that not my fault?”

There’s no winning this argument, no point to driving the issue off the cliff and making things worse. Instead, Dean takes a step closer to his husband and kisses him deep and thorough until their lips are too swollen and numb to do any more talking.

҉     ҉     ҉

It turns out that Jem’s eyes are hazel: golden, almost honey-colored brown in the center that fades and blends into a darker, muted green.

It also turns out that Jem is mildly autistic.

They knew he had some strange quirks early on, but the more he struggled in elementary school and his inability to socialize well made those quirks a little more worrisome. His doctor suggested Asperger’s (Dean refused to call it was it really was, a _syndrome,_ because the word sent chills up and down his spine and sent his heart into a gallop) and the follow-up testing confirmed it.

He’s still flawless and lovely in every sense of the word, still everything they dreamed a son would be, and Sam promised his unconditional support as a doctor and an uncle whenever Dean and Cas felt like they needed it. The only difference was that Jem’s quirks and habits were less humorous and more worthy of their study: the way he focused so intently on building and structure, his preference to avoid other groups of people and even his lack of eye contact were things they poked fun at before but now get written down in a little notebook for Sam to review.

By the time Jem was in third grade, he was a well-established honor student with a particular gift for science and mathematics, but had very few friends and didn’t talk much. He loved to sit with his dads on the couch, a bowl of popcorn in his lap, snuggled between Dean and Cas and giggling at the silly characters doing their thing on the screen.

They’re watching a movie on Netflix, but Dean’s mind keeps wandering and spacing out too much for him to really know what’s going on with the plot. It doesn’t matter, he thinks, because he’s with his most favorite people in the world and wouldn’t trade this time for anything. It’s not the movie that matters: it’s Jem, who’s passed out with bits of popcorn in his hand, his head resting against Dean’s side; and it’s Cas, who’s making doe-eyes at Dean with a warm smile on his face.

“I want another one,” Cas says, keeping his voice barely above a whisper so Jem doesn’t wake up, “please?”

Dean tilts his head and returns the smile, wishing his son was a little smaller so he could lean over and give Cas a kiss. “Another movie?” Dean asks, not sure if he missed something when he was spacing out, “or a bowl of popcorn?”

Cas rolls his eyes and follows it up with a smirk, shaking his head like Dean said something funny. “No, you dork. I want another child.”

Dean huffs out a weak breath, his lips forming an open circle around the gasp. “Oh.”

“You don’t want more?” Cas whines, looking down at Jem. He brushes their son’s raven hair away from his face, letting his fingers linger in the softness just like when he was baby. “I want more.”

“Do you think it would work? I mean, Jem’s got, you know, his _thing_. What if another kid in the house is too much for him?”

Cas’ brows knit together at the same time a scowl overtakes his face. He’s angry, hurt, and Dean’s not sure what he can do to make it better. He didn’t mean to upset him, doesn’t want to start a fight, but it seems like Jem’s diagnosis is something that needs to be taken into consideration.

Cas rises from the couch without another word, moving carefully to keep Jem soundly asleep, then scoops their son up into his arms and carries him down the hallway into his bedroom. Dean takes a moment to clean up the popcorn and turn off the movie, and by the time Cas comes back out to the living room, he’s had a few minutes to fully process the question and everything else it entails.

But Cas doesn’t look any calmer, isn’t any more relaxed with Jem tucked safely in bed. They stand in front of each other awkwardly for a few minutes while Dean does his best impression of a wounded dog to avoid being yelled at. He’s not very good at it, never has been; he’s not Sam for chrissakes, and that lucky fucker got the puppy-eyes gene that skipped Dean entirely.

“Jeremy isn’t broken,” Cas finally says, crossing his arms in front of his chest. It’s not something that Cas does often, but when he does whip out that particular move, it’s because he means business.

“I know that,” Dean retorts, feeling defensive. He never meant to suggest that there was something wrong their son, just that it might be in his best interest to be an only child.

“You don’t think he could handle it? You think he might regress if we brought another baby home?”

“Come on, Cas, that’s not what I’m saying. I think he can handle anything, I just don’t think he should have to.”

The clench of Cas’ jaw and fists lets Dean know that he’s said something wrong again, that he’s upset his husband almost to the point of yelling. It’s not something they do; yell, that is. It’s a point of pride and they like to keep it that way, because really, what’s there to argue about? They love each other, forgive each other, have unending patience for their mistakes, so this sight is a rare one and makes Dean’s insides feel like slippery, slimy eels.

“It’s not something he’d have to handle, Dean. There are billions of people in the world and he’s been adjusting just fine. You never know, he might even be better for it, but we can’t make these kinds of decisions based on what would make Jem happiest. We have to make these decisions for _us,_ babe, because this _our_ life, and I’ve been wanting this for a long time. Just one more,” Cas pleads, his eyes widening to make room for the fat drops of tears that spill out onto his cheeks.

Oh, Christ. How is Dean supposed to say no to that?

“We’ll talk to Sam about it, okay? I just want to make sure we’re prepared for every possible outcome.”

From behind them, standing in the hallway, Jem clears his throat.

Dean and Cas both dart their eyes toward the sound, and Dean can hear both of their hearts sink further in their chest at the sight. He hopes to God that their son didn’t hear them bickering, didn’t hear the way they were discussing him like he was some kind of fragile, breakable person.

Jeremy tilts his head and narrows his eyes, his floppy hair falling to the side.

_“Dean?” Sam mutters, his long fingers gripping tight along the fabric of Dean’s jacket, his voice strong but gentled by the knife held against his throat._

_A man walks in front of them, twirling something soft and florid between his fingers. He looks over Sam’s shoulder at Dean, a smug grin on his face._

_“I gotta tell ya, you’re one butt-ugly stripper,” Sam spits, struggling against Dean’s rock solid hold._

_“Or maybe I got everything I wanted,” the man says, stepping closer, “I got Dean.”_

_“Dean, come on man, this isn’t you,” his brother grunts, his struggles growing stronger despite the blade in Dean’s hand._

_He’s going to cut Sammy’s throat, he’s going to kill him and get him out of the way and out of Dean’s life for good. He doesn’t care that Sam’s final moments will be in a hideous motel room, that the last thing he’ll ever see are red drapes and red sheets and his own red, seeping blood._

_Sam’s hair flops to the side as he tries to worm his way out of Dean’s grasp; the long brown strands getting in Dean’s face and smothering him with the smell of cheap, rose-scented motel shampoo._

_The man comes closer, his lips so close that Dean feel the wetness of his breath in his ear. “Why don’t you cut him, just a little on his neck, right there,” he instructs, and Dean can feel the command course through his veins in snaking tendrils of power he can’t resist._

_Dean presses the blade deeper into Sam’s throat; he can feel the resistance of his own brother’s flesh, can feel the way it tears beneath the blade so easily. Sam needs to know that this is real, that this is happening, that he’s going to die by his own brother’s –_

“Can I have a sister?” Jem asks, chewing on his lip. “A brother would be cool, too.”

Cas turns toward Dean with a bright, overly excited look on his face.

They’re staring at him, Cas and Jem both, waiting for a response. Dean feels sick, confused; what the hell did he just see? What was that?

He’s truly scared for the first time in a while, afraid that there’s more wrong with his brain than they originally thought. He just fucking pictured trying to kill his own brother, for fuck’s sake. It was just like the nightmares, only slightly more vivid and real, and if he doesn’t get enough air in his lungs soon, he’s going to throw up or pass out or both.

“Of course, buddy,” Dean says, trying to hide the panic in his voice. Cas finally catches on that something is wrong, sending Jem back to his bedroom with quiet reassurances that they’ll get him a sibling.

Dean doesn’t let Cas touch him, doesn’t want to feel anyone’s hands on him after what he just saw.

There’s something scratching at the surface just beneath his crawling skin, itching and clawing to get free, but Dean does what his therapist taught him to nearly twelve years ago, what he probably should have been doing more often to keep the nightmares and visions at bay.

He pulls open the little drawer on his nightstand, pulls out the bottle of blue pills, and pops one in his mouth.

҉     ҉     ҉

“Shh,” Cas hushes, pressing a finger to Dean’s lips, giggling as he does it.

They’ve had a little too much to drink, but they’re partying and the kids are at Sam’s house for the weekend.

On the heels of Ryan’s announcement that he and Jen were getting a divorce, Dean and Cas are properly celebrating thirty years of marriage like the couple of teens they still are at heart. Dean felt kind of bad doing so, worried that his happiness and pride in such a long, successful marriage would be poorly interpreted by his friend, but Cas insisted and said they deserved it.

And really, they kind of do.

Thirty years married, thirty-five years together, and few extra years tacked on there to count for the flirting and courtship before they actually made their relationship official. It’s an enormous feat, something worthy of commemoration, so it’s natural that they would choose to honor the momentous occasion alone in the back of a truck.

As humorous as Dean might think that is, there’s an underlying element of truth there, too. Their lives are centered completely around their loved ones; all their free time is spent with Jem and Gabby, Saturdays are spent at Eiker Park with the guys and Sundays are nights they have family dinners with Sam and Jess.

They wanted a little alone time, which can be hard to accomplish in the small Midwestern town where everybody they’ve ever known lives, but they think they’ve finally managed to find the perfect spot for a little exciting tryst.

Nebraska is Corn Country, so understandably there are miles and miles of roads that only lead to more fields of corn and wheat, through farms and wasted land, intersecting webs of trails and other tiny roads that lead to nowhere.

Cas parked the truck on one such trail, a couple miles out of town. His first thought was one fear, wondering if Jem ever came out to a place like this when he went on dates, but Dean shoved that thought away far and fast. The last thing he wants to think about right now is the combination of his son and unprotected teen sex.

Dean is laying on his back with his legs spread wide, almost lewdly so, as Cas ruts into him for the second time in an hour.

His back is starting to dig into the ridges lining the bed of the truck, protected only by the thin layer of a cheap sleeping bag and his sweater. Cas isn’t exactly going easy on him, thrusting into him with the determination of an old man out to prove his virility and stamina, and though Dean doesn’t have anything else to compare it to, he’d say Cas is doing a mighty fine job of it.

Dean was already feeling a bit raw from the first round, when Cas started the evening off with a fantastic blowjob and followed it up with a solid hour of rough fucking – long enough for Dean’s dick to get back with the program and shoot off again from the brilliant friction against his prostate.

Cas hasn’t been all that shy with his mouth, either: sucking and biting bruises into Dean’s chest and neck like he’s hungry for it, hungry for the taste of sweat and salt and _man_ , working Dean between his lips and teeth until he was shaking from it.

He’s spread out beneath his husband, moaning now without reservation or fear of getting caught, his twice-spent cock twitching as it makes a valiant attempt to come back to life for the third time. Cas is relentless, breathing heavily but nowhere near stopping any time soon; he’s more excited and turned on than Dean’s seen in years, his thrusts deepening with every whimper and breathy pant forced from Dean’s lungs.

“Oh, fuck, _yeah_ ,” Cas whines, dropping his chest until he’s lying on top of Dean, burying his face in Dean’s neck and sucking on a tender patch of skin. From the way his neck feels overused and raw in Cas’ mouth, Dean is willing to bet that particular area was already worked over once or twice. He’s still pushing into Dean with unrelenting force, so hard that they’re slowly moving up the truck bed and into the solid metal of the cabin. He’s so wet and slick there from Cas’ first orgasm, gliding the way toward his second, that the sloppy sounds of Cas fucking him and their liberal moans are the only things punctuating the dark, cornfield silence.

Dean lifts his legs then, wrapping them around Cas’ waist for leverage, working his hips against each thrust for added friction, to pull his husband as deep inside him as he possibly can. His dick is filling out again, sliding around on his stomach through his own messy semen, and it’s so sensitive and responsive that he doesn’t doubt he’ll come for a third time before Cas is finished. He reaches up and runs his fingers through Cas’ dark hair, holding on for dear life as Cas goes wild with renewed excitement and crushes their mouths together, his tongue swiping so deeply into Dean’s mouth that he’s worried it might actually trigger his gag reflex.

Cas’ hips are snapping forward like he’s twenty years old again rather than nearly fifty. He pulls away from the kiss to catch his breath, bracing his weight on his elbows without pausing, pawing at Dean’s face with desperate hands. “Fuck, Dean, come on,” he urges, though Dean’s not sure what Cas is asking for until he says, “say my name, baby, say it.”

A long tremble shakes through Dean’s body at the command, making him loose and desperate for more of his husband’s deep, frantic voice. They’ve always been vocal during sex, Dean especially, but saying each other’s names isn’t something they’ve ever made a habit of. They’re each other’s firsts; first loves, first sexual experiences, first husbands, everything – and they’ve never needed to prove that to each other, not once. But now, in the sweltering heat of the moment, Cas wants to hear his lover moan his name like a hooker trying to earn his hourly wage.

Dean doesn’t even care: how could he? His whole life, anything and everything that he is, belongs to Cas. He’s so far gone for the man, so deeply and unreservedly in love with his husband that it would take an act of God to stop him; but even then, Dean’s pretty sure he would choose Cas over God any day. Cas is someone he knows, someone he loves and has full belief in.

God, though, has left himself and his teachings up to interpretation.

Really, it’s no contest.

“Cas, fuck,  _Cas_ ,” he moans, tightening his grip in his husband’s hair, letting his lips brush up against Cas’ ear as he says it, “shit, baby, so fucking good. Love you Cas, love you so fucking much,” he continues, not even sure of what he’s saying anymore. Cas’ rutting speeds impossibly faster, their litany of moans and heavy breaths mingling into one long indiscernible wail that neither of them can control.

Then Dean comes all over himself, pearly strings of come shooting up over his and Cas’ chest as he cries out his husband’s name, blinded by the most intense form of pleasure that he’s felt before in his life.

Then Cas is fucking into him hard; once, twice, then his hips stutter as his mouth falls open around a shocked gasp, as if the force of his own orgasm caught him by surprise.

He collapses on top of Dean, tired and breathing heavily against the damp, bruised skin of Dean’s neck. Cas presses his lips against Dean’s flesh, but it’s not quite a kiss. He just wants to be close, wants to feel his husband against his mouth as a reminder that they’re both irrevocably owned, both entirely consumed and at the mercy of the other.

Dean wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Love you,” he repeats, kissing Cas’ sweaty hairline. He licks his lips afterwards, trying to be subtle about it even though he’s unashamed of how much he loves the way his husband tastes.

“We still got it,” Cas laughs, still buzzed and humming through his second orgasm. “God, I don’t ever want to stop fucking you.”

Dean laughs, agreeing with the sentiment as his legs fall uselessly to side. “I hope we’re still fucking when we’re ninety. Can you imagine what a blowjob would feel like when we have removable teeth? So much to look forward to,” he jokes, not minding the playful slap Cas gives him on his shoulder.

“I’m so glad we met each other, Dean. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

“Me neither,” Dean says, feeling more exposed and vulnerable than he’d like. “If you die before me, Cas, I don’t think I could live on without you.”

Cas hushes him with a gentle kiss, keeping his position above and inside of him. “I know, baby. I feel the same way, but we have kids. I don’t think I can live a single day without you, but Jeremy and Gabriella might need us. I don’t know,” he says, his thoughts trailing away, “I wouldn’t last very long, that much is for sure.”

Dean takes a deep breath, letting the words sink in. It’s true, leaving their children to deal with two dead parents at once might be hard, might not be fair, but the thought of breathing in air that isn’t being shared by his soul mate seems like too much of a burden to bear.

“They’ll be okay,” Dean decides, smiling, “they’re good kids, they have lots of friends and family and one day they’ll have loves of their own. This might sound bad, but living without you seems a whole lot worse than making our kids live without both of us.”

Cas buries his face in Dean’s chest, muffling a weak, subtle cry that Dean barely catches. “Yeah,” he finally says, keeping his face well hidden, “you’re right.”

҉     ҉     ҉ 

Jem goes off to college four short years later, and their sweet, blonde, precocious Gabby Girl goes nine years after that.

Their son doesn’t return to Big Springs, but not because he doesn’t like it. Asperger’s didn’t make a lick of difference when it came his collegiate success, graduating with top honors and going to Cambridge for his graduate studies in engineering. All those years of his intense scrutiny and focus on math and science paid off, and they couldn’t be happier.

When Gabby goes to college, she chooses to stay closer to home, attending the nearby community college for a degree in auto body work and restoration. She was always so interested in cars, an eager student under her daddy Dean’s tutelage and helped repair the Impala more than once. She dreams of opening her own shop one day and specializing in restoring old classics, just like her grandfather John. Dean is so proud he can barely speak through his tears when she graduates and applies for her first business loan.

Their beautiful, perfect, amazing children are adults and starting lives of their own, and Dean doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore.

He’s old now, and he can say it without any hint of self-depreciation or irony. He’s nearing seventy years of age, practically an ancient behemoth, pudgy around the middle with white, silvery hair and stubble that he can never seem to control. Cas is much the same, though his pale hair is more of a contrast to the dark, rich mop he used to boast in his youth. His bright blue eyes are a bit faded and lost their shine, but his lips are just as soft and plump as ever.

They don’t fuck each other as much as they used to, not with Cas’ bad knee and Dean’s sciatica, but they kiss each other like it’s the damn apocalypse every single day and not even God himself could stop them.

They get tired, too, more often than they’re used to. They take naps together in front of the television with a bowl of popcorn and reminisce about the days when Jem used to fall asleep between them. They laugh about the times when Gabby was just an infant, when she wouldn’t drift off into dreamland anywhere but the couch like some kind of modern Princess and the Pea. She felt safest there for some reason, like the happiest memories kept her warm and comfortable and wrapped her in peaceful bliss.

Dean can’t really argue with that, though. They made so many beautiful memories on the couch that he can’t blame her.

He hasn’t had a nightmare in years, thank God. It’s been the better half of a decade since his he last woke up in a panicked sweat and needing Cas to comfort him, to calm him down.

The darkened, bruise-like skin is still there, still prominent, but Dean doesn’t trace the edges of it anymore.

He’s lived such a full, happy, perfect life that there’s really no point to it. He doesn’t need reminders to keep him going, doesn’t need mortality as a constant reason to keep him appreciative and motivated to move forward.

Dean is completely happy, so wholly satisfied with his life that he could die right now and not have any regrets.

He tells his husband daily how much he loves him, how much he needs him to stay sane. He calls his children twice weekly and stays up to date on their lives. He and his little brother still get together once a week for a game of chess or checkers like the old fogeys they are.

Everything is perfect. He couldn’t imagine a better way to live out his retirement.

He and Cas are sitting hand in hand on the porch swing, staring out at the tree line or the grass or at nothing in particular, talking about the days when they first met and first fell in love; how shy they both were, how afraid of being rejected and uncertain if the other was actually gay or just wanting to experiment. They loved each other so much, even then, well before they had any idea what it would be like to spend an entire life together, to raise children and grow old and love each more and more with every passing day.

“We did good, didn’t we?” Dean asks, though he’s certain he knows the answer. There’s no doubt in his mind that he and his husband lived their lives to the fullest, their most able years well behind them, their children fully grown and venturing into the world on prepared, well-educated feet.

“We did,” Cas agrees, his deep, granite voice a little weaker and more tired than in his youth, “we did good, Dean. Real good.”

Their bodies undulate in a smooth rhythm as they rock in the swing, hands gripped tightly over pale, aged skin. They have a blanket draped over their laps, one that Jess quilted over a summer nearly a decade ago, back before arthritis took its toll. The sun is setting in the distance, dipping below the tree line in a way that feels a bit trite and cliché, but they don’t contest it. They let the sun fade away behind the curvature of the earth, staining the sky with golds and reds and purples in a brilliant, stunning display.

“No regrets,” Cas says then, resting his head on Dean’s shoulder, “none of it, except maybe letting you fall off the roof. I wouldn’t change a single moment of our life.”

“Me neither,” Dean agrees, ignoring Cas’ attempt at self-blame, “I’m so glad you talked me into a second child, babe. Gabby is perfect; meant for us, just like Jem.”

“Yeah,” Cas breathes, his speech slowing a bit as he gets tired, “I’m so glad you came back to me, Dean. I know I said it before, but you’re everything. You came back.”

“Of course, Cas,” Dean whispers, letting the darkened sky set the tone, “I’ll always come back to you, babe, you know that. Nothing can keep us apart.”

҉     ҉     ҉

 “Dean?!” Sam shrieks, shaking Dean’s head with far too much urgency, “Shit, oh God, _Dean_ ,” he cries, but none of it makes sense.

He had just been sitting with his husband, swinging lazily on the porch and resting his eyes for a moment before this. Did he pass out? Did he have a heart attack? Was he waking up in the hospital _again?_

He recognizes his brother’s voice, but it’s far too potent and young to be real. Sam is yelling at him with the intensity of a man in his youth, with the sound and strength he hasn’t heard in almost twenty years.

“Dean!” Sam calls out again, his monstrously large hands cupping both sides of Dean’s face, shaking him like some kind of Goodwill ragdoll.

“S-Sammy?” Dean manages, trying desperately to figure out what’s going on, “wha’s happ…wha’s happenin’?”

“Oh, Christ, thank God,” Sam bellows, then Dean’s entire body feels like it’s falling to the ground before his brother catches him, bearing Dean’s entire weight against his chest.

“Cas?” Dean tries, reaching blindly around for a familiar touch to keep him centered. Everything feels different, feels wrong, and he doesn’t know how to handle the contradictory sensations of renewed youth and confusion and overwhelming numbness.

“Yeah, yeah, good idea,” Sam says, closing his eyes and muttering something under his breath. Dean’s mind so tangled, he has no idea what’s going on or why he’s the subject of such concentrated focus. He feels fine to be honest; better than he has in so many years that he’s lost count.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he feels good, though, because his entire body aches and strains with every muscle moved or twitched. He can’t even _think_ about moving without wanting to wince, without wondering what awful, torturous God is playing tricks with his head.

Then Cas is standing there by his side, staring down at him with narrowed, confused eyes.

When Dean finally looks around, _really_ looks, he notices a few things that make him feel sick, that jar with his core and sends him reeling without an anchor.

Sam is young, not yet thirty, and Cas looks like he just stepped out of a magazine with perfectly coiffed hair and a clean shaven face.

It hits him then, like the force of a train plowing through a body on the tracks.

His old life, his _real_ life, comes back to him in a flash, pouring into his open, weakened mind and reminding him of everything that’s true and factual and tangible.

For the second time in his life, Dean realizes he’s spent forty years in a place that doesn’t exist on earth.

“Fuck,” he chokes, his legs giving out beneath him.

The Cas he loves is gone, his children aren’t real, and he’s lived enough for three lifetimes without anything to show for it.

He closes his eyes, unable to support himself any longer, his fingers and toes tingling with what he assumes to be major blood loss as he feels himself being slowly lowered to the floor.

The last thing he sees before passing out is Cas’ concerned, worrisome eyes looking down at him without a hint of love, adoration, or commitment.

Dean hopes he dies before Sam gets him to the hospital.  


	3. Mojo Pin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mojo Pin - by Jeff Buckley

When the new memories pour into his brain, the old ones don’t leave.

Dean’s head feels cracked open, swollen, throbbing; there’s no room in his head for both sets of memories, not with Hell crammed in there too. Just as he thinks his brain is going to burst and splatter all over the three of them, something clicks into place and the memories sink deeper into his brain, relieving the pressure.

He’s delirious for a moment, completely out of touch with reality. Both lives settle in the mulch of his synapses and grow; weeds sprouting in his mind that he can’t pluck, wouldn’t even know how to if he tried. His mind attempts uselessly to navigate between the two, confused by such contradicting experiences that when he stares up at Sammy’s face and the blurred motion of a trench coat, he doesn’t know what to do; doesn’t know what to say.

Dean settles on a weak plea. There’s no part of his body that doesn’t hurt or scream for mercy. He’s shivering so fiercely that his teeth are actually chattering and so much of his body is numb that he wonders if he actually has any limbs at all.

Nausea creeps in next, slithering along the floor before crawling up his legs and into his gut. Dean can feel the urge to puke swelling in his stomach like an overinflated balloon, pushing up into his chest so hard that it hurts. He can’t move, no matter how loudly he tells his body to roll over and hurl whatever’s left in his stomach. It’s a small mercy he’s able to turn his head to the side at all and dry heave for a minute before the sensation finally passes.

Sam is shouting something above him, yelling at Cas to _do something, asshole, before he dies_ , but when Dean manages to glance up from the cold cement, when the world finally sharpens just enough that he can recognize what he’s looking at, all he sees are cold, confused, painfully empty eyes staring back him with interest rather than concern.

Then Sam is cussing, and Dean feels his head lowered ever so slightly into a pair of hard, muscled legs clad in jeans.

He’s felt this before, he knows, but his mind wars with itself over which memory bank to pull from.

It takes a lot longer than his should, his mind already slow and thick from the fact that he’s practically a corpse, but eventually he realizes that his head is in Sam’s lap, cradled carefully by his long fingers and sweaty, blood-damp palms.

Dean looks back up to Cas, and for just a moment his brain tricks him into thinking that Cas knows him, loves him, and desperately wants him to be okay.

A pitiful, trembling hand reaches out and grasps at Cas’ pants, flingers clenching tight around the fabric as he emits a pathetic, “Cas? B-Baby?”

Two fingers sharpen into focus in front of his face, growing closer until they’re pressed firmly against his forehead.

In an instant, the nausea is gone. Dean’s not cold or shivering, not shaking on the floor and muddled with confusion or fear. Cas healed him with his angel mojo in a single moment, and fluttered off in the next.

It’s just him and Sam now, piled on the cold floor of an old dilapidated building in Malta, Montana.

Fuck.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” Sam says, worried and completely oblivious to the thoughts running through Dean’s mind, “you gonna be okay? Can you stand?”

Dean lets himself lay motionless while he processes the questions.

No, he’s not okay.

He thought Hell was the worst thing he could go through, thought that forty years simmering in the purest form of misery and pain was the worst that this life had to offer. He held that particular memory as both a badge and a talisman: proof that he had endured the epitome of human fear and came back to earth alive and screaming like a wailing newborn. He used those memories to protect himself, to keep the lesser fears at bay because he knew nothing else that could ever come at him topside would compare.

Until this, he thinks, because this is a brand of misery that not even Hell can replicate.

Dean never had anything to miss, not like this. He loves his parents and God knows he’d sell his soul to keep Sammy safe, a point he’d proven in the most literal sense when the time came and he had to make the choice. It didn’t even matter in the light of recent revelations, when they discovered that they were vessels and not even death could separate them from that destiny.

He could have spared himself Hell and the fucking angels would have brought Sam back anyway.

Doesn’t matter, though. Doesn’t make a single difference to him because he’d do it again in a heartbeat. Sam didn’t deserve that death, didn’t deserve to be stabbed in the back by a coward, not after all the shit they’ve been through.

Dean can stand, he’s pretty sure of it. Sam offers him help off the ground and he gladly takes it without a word, letting the full weight of his body rest on his renewed legs.

Beats being seventy, he realizes, though he’d rather be seventy and still have Cas.

“Just take me back to the motel,” Dean says, refusing to meet Sam’s eyes. He can’t look at his little brother yet, can’t face the barrage of questions he knows are about to come.

“You sure, Dean? ‘Cause, God, I thought you were –”

“Cas fucking cured me, right? I’m fine. Let’s go.”

҉     ҉     ҉

Sam keeps his big mouth shut until they’re safely behind closed doors.

His mouth actually stays shut a bit longer than that, trying instead to speak volumes in Dean’s direction with the narrow set of his eyes and the worried clench of his jaw. It’s so disorienting seeing him this way, with the longer hair and the slightly thinner frame, a lifetime’s worth of stress and trauma and loss shading every facet of his features. He’s not the short-haired, stocky doctor that part of him remembers, and the inconsistent lives in Dean’s head are making him dizzy.

Inside the motel, Sam sits slowly and carefully at the little table in front of his laptop. Dean can still feel his brother’s eyes on his skin, but only for incremental blips at a time. It’s almost as if Sam is genuinely afraid he’ll break Dean in half if he looks at him for too long.

Dean ignores the prickling sensation on the back of his neck, the same honed skill he remembers flaring so intensely that day at the hospital ( _it wasn’t a day, wasn’t real, it was all in your fucking head_ ) choosing instead to search through his duffel for the bottle of Blue Label he knows is in there.

He never intended to drink the stuff, but he learned a valuable lesson a few years back that such a drink could be used to barter for information, and it seemed like a waste _not_ to carry it around just in case the need for it circled around again.

He finds it, still sealed in its original box.

Dean pops the box open with ease, pulling out the heavy bottle by the neck and cutting at the gold film around the cap with his fingernail.

“Dean,” Sam scolds, shifting uncomfortably in the motel chair. He’s looking directly at Dean now, not wavering with the irrational fear that his brother might crumple like loose-leaf under the weight of it. “You’re not okay.”

No shit he’s not okay. “Who needs BBC when we got you, Sherlock?”

“Talk to me,” Sam insists, his mouth gaping slightly like he’s losing his patience. Dean spares him a quick glance, taking in the reality of his little brother from a new perspective.

Sam: annoying, oversized prick with a penchant for heartfelt talks, long walks on the beach, and drinking demon blood. Long hair, stubborn, Stanford drop-out.

The last part is Dean’s fault, he knows, but the Sam he also remembers in another world had graduated and went on to medical school.

It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the memories weren’t so goddamn _real_. It’s not like waking from a bad dream and taking comfort in knowing such horrors are impossible, not like watching a movie and knowing the gun pointed at your face is just a director’s vision showing up on the screen. Even being raised from Hell had been different; those particular memories were bathed in red and black and acid, sharp around the edges and _loud_. He could separate those forty years from reality, could tuck them all away in a little box to be dealt with later and shut them away with a metaphorical lid. There were no similarities, no confusing crossovers or parallels to life on earth.

When Dean was in Hell, he knew it. He could still remember what life had been like before the Hellhounds slashed him to grisly ribbons.

“Did you get a psychiatry degree or some shit when I was gone? Fuck off,” Dean spits, twisting the cap and popping it off before taking a deep whiff of the rare whiskey.

Not bad.

“Come on, man. Something’s obviously up with you,” Sam starts, typing something into his computer, “and I’m pretty sure you called Cas _baby._ ”

Now that Dean thinks about it, he realizes that he was able to prepare himself for Hell, too. He knew it was coming, had a general idea of what to expect, and despite his brother’s noble attempts to keep him from riding the one-way elevator into the underworld, Dean knew it was coming whether he wanted it to or not. A whole year of mulling it over and drinking and fucking and doing his damn job and fucking some more.

“I mean, what was up with that, Dean? Cas was lookin’ at you kinda funny when you said it.”

Plus, the stupid asshole Djinn had to take away all of Dean’s memories just to keep him docile and soaking up whatever genie-juice it was serving. He distinctly remembers the first time a couple years back when a Djinn sent him on a ride through Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood of Make-Believe, when he woke up beside Carmen and his mom was alive and Sam was still at Stanford.

He had all his memories then, right? He remembered everything from his real life, but he didn’t know enough to recognize that the world was as false as Pam Anderson’s tits. Dean had been stupid enough to think the whole thing was a granted wish before following the trail of clues and waking up.

“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Sam accuses, closing the lid of his laptop and crossing his arms. “What kind of wish or dream did you have this time, anyway?”

If Dean doesn’t say something, Sam is never going to shut the fuck up.

“You kill the Djinn?” Dean asks, taking a swig of the whiskey and sputtering a bit at the taste.

Christ, even his mouth is confused. He never drank this hard stuff in that other life, never really needed it or wanted it enough to try.

Sam tries to hide the look of shock clouding his face, but he does a piss-poor job of it. Dean can’t tell if it’s from the simple fact that he actually spoke, or if it’s because he choked on a sip of whiskey despite swimming in the stuff since he was fifteen years old.

Could be both.

“Yeah,” Sam answers, the shock melting away into one of his kicked puppy-dog faces.

“How long did it have me for?” Dean asks, and because he wants to make his brother feel like shit, he adds, “How long did it take you to find me?”

The way Sam recoils back into his seat, wiping at his face like he can erase the pain there, tells Dean that the words did their job. “Couple days.”

A couple days. Two, maybe even three strung up and bleeding out drip by drip before his brother finally saved him.

Forty years in his head. A fucking lifetime.

He can’t decide whether he’s angrier that it took Sam that long to find him or that Sam found him at all.

҉     ҉     ҉

Dean drinks himself into a stupor, and Sam doesn’t stop him. Not at first.

The first night back in the motel is lost. He drank so much of the whiskey that he blacked out and didn’t wake up until the following afternoon, and proceeded to drink himself unconscious for a second time. It helped.

It’s not just that he doesn’t want to be awake, even though that’s a pretty big part of it. His head just fucking _hurts_ , like he really did bruise the damn thing somehow and it’s not healing right. There’s too much in his mind, too much that shouldn’t be there, and he gets confused so easily that it’s embarrassing.

Part of the problem with the extra memories is that his brain still believes they’re real. Sometimes he’ll just be sitting there and forget where he is, or he’ll look into a mirror and startle at the reflection that greets him. When he awoke from a hangover that second morning, his first thought was that he was having some kind stroke and he panicked when Cas wasn’t in bed beside him.

None of that was as bad as what he did just a few minutes ago.

Dean had been watching a rerun on the shitty motel television, then out of nowhere he had the inclination to call Jem and see how he was doing. He wanted to know if his son had met a special someone yet, if he’d been in touch with his sister, and what the weather was like in England.

He’d almost dialed the entire number before remembering his son doesn’t actually exist.

So really, being drunk is the kindest thing he can do for himself. It’s the most practical way to make it through the day without incident.

Sam had been studying him carefully like some kind of science project, not stopping him or complaining even once. Dean knows that probably means it’s just the calm before the storm, but he also knows that whatever storm Sam can muster and throw in his direction is nothing compared to the tempest Dean already feels inside himself.

Unfortunately, Sam has already been through this scenario once before; he had played detective and scoped out all the clues after Dean came back from Hell, and eventually Dean crumbled and confessed to everything. It didn’t take his brother long to learn all of the nitty-gritty secrets he wanted to know, to see how deserving of Hell Dean really was.

Which means it’s only a matter of time until Sam manipulates him like a chess piece and wrings him dry of everything that happened in the Djinn dream.

Dean would rather die, but these days, he doesn’t have much choice.

There’s a world to save, an apocalypse to stop, and an archangel to repeatedly deny until the bastard finally gets the point.

All in good time, he supposes. Right now it’s time to get drunk.

҉     ҉     ҉ 

They get a call from an old sitter, a woman who used to watch them when they were kids while their dad went out hunting. She has a family now, a new home, and what sounds like a poltergeist carving up her daughter’s stomach.

Sam agrees to help them out immediately; of course he does, the selfless, generous, douchebag that he is. It’s not that Dean doesn’t want to help, not that he’s ready to quit the job or anything, he just doesn’t want to drive over two thousand miles to Housatonic with Sam in the passenger seat staring at him like he’s broken the entire time.

It doesn’t help that he hasn’t seen Cas since…well, since the angel cured him and flew away to deal with more important matters.

It hasn’t been long, only a few days since he woke up nearly dead and had that entire beautiful life ripped away from him, but that’s how Dean’s been measuring the time.

Four days now since he last saw his husband.

No, his angel.

Not really _his_ angel, just an angel who happened to pull him out of Hell and has a mutual interest in stopping the apocalypse.

It’s not until the fifth day, the first day on the road toward Massachusetts, that Sam decides he’s had enough of Dean’s drinking.

It’s probably because Sam is the one doing all the driving. Maybe he’s just tired and not used to being the one constantly behind the wheel, or maybe he grew a vagina and started his period and he’s cranky and bloated; whatever the reason, the bitch face he’s sporting has escalated from general unhappiness to glaring at Dean with extreme prejudice.

They’re somewhere in North Dakota, or maybe even Minnesota, when Sam pulls off the road at a little diner with a giant dinosaur eating a burger on top of it. Dean might have chuckled if he wasn’t so numb from the bottle of Nyquil he’s nursing.

“Hungry?” Sam says, though Dean’s pretty sure it’s more of a bark or a snap. There’s an annoyed edge to Sam’s voice that he usually reserves for when Dean’s doing something really wrong or really stupid, but Dean doesn’t particularly care enough to figure out which one it is right now.

“Nah,” Dean says, taking another sip of Nyquil, “you go ahead, I’ll take a nap.”

Sam huffs and clenches his jaw, unmoving. “You haven’t eaten in two days.”

“Like I said,” Dean yawns, sinking further into seat, “you go ahead.”

A moment passes with neither of them speaking, just sitting awkwardly in the car while Dean leans against the door and closes his eyes. Sam takes a deep breath then, shifting in the seat and strumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “If you don’t go into the diner and eat with me, I’m going to call Cas and tell him there’s something wrong with you.”

Dean bolts upright and opens the door in a matter of seconds.

He’s ashamed that his first thought was _please, please call him_ , so much that the violent urge to see him was crushed by the reminder that he _can’t_ see him, not yet. Cas doesn’t love him, they were never married, never raised children together or kissed on a porch swing or fucked. Seeing Cas would only be confusing, would only make it that much harder to shove the memories to the side and get on with his miserable, lonely life.

Whatever’s left of it, anyway, considering the impending apocalypse and all.

So, in a futile effort to spare himself the pain, he listens to Sam like a good boy and follows his brother into the stupid roadside diner.

The diner is pretty much like every other place he’s ever been in. There’s nothing special about it, nothing that he can even latch his eyes onto to feign interest and avoid his brother’s inquisitive glare. It’s a burger joint, of course, with an inexplicable dinosaur theme that Dean can only assume is meant to attract tourists. It’s lame, but not lame enough that he’s going to open his mouth and talk about it.

Sam seems fairly determined to strike up a conversation, making annoying little comments about different foods on the menu, about the waitress being a rare combination of young, hot, and single, and asking Dean if he intends to ‘hit that’ like they’re both teenagers and too horny to talk about anything else.

That’s when Dean knows his brother is desperate. Sam’s usual thing is nagging him about who he sleeps with, about getting laid while on the job, or glaring at him while he flirts with any female who’s willing to give him attention.

Not today, apparently, because Sam won’t stop trying to set them up, and Dean’s starting to lose his patience.

In all fairness, the waitress is pretty good looking, better than the average piece of ass he’s used to seeing at low key joints like this. He knows there was a time when he would have jumped on the opportunity to charm his way into her panties in the employee’s bathroom, but the very thought of kissing someone who isn’t Cas makes him feel sick.

Ultimately, Sam orders a chicken salad with blue cheese dressing, and Dean decides he may as well go for a tried and true bacon cheeseburger with a side of fries.

“You can tell me,” Sam says, his voiced hushed and low like they’re sharing a secret. “Whatever it was, you know that.”

Dean swallows a mouthful of coke, though he’s not really tasting it as it slides over his tongue and down his throat. It could be a mouthful of air for all he cares, or cyanide, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.

“I know,” he answers, not meeting his brother’s eyes, “but, no.”

Sam winces as though the words cut him somewhere deep, like a personal attack on his soul that his own brother can’t confide in him.

The worst part is knowing that Sam would understand, that his brother would listen and not judge him and probably give him some useful advice, but he’s not ready. Dean can’t talk about it, he just can’t.

Because the truth is that it would kill him. He knew that in the dream, in that false life he loved so much, that having to live without Cas would destroy him. It’s just as true now as it was then, and talking about it only stokes the fire that keeps the pain hot and raw and fresh.

“Was it a nightmare?” Sam asks, his voice a plea, “can you tell me that much?”

For a moment, Dean doesn’t know how to answer. He could lie, play it off like another stint in Hell that he doesn’t want to relive, or he could tell the truth and face the consequences like a man.

He’s not much a man these days, is he?

“Yeah,” Dean lies, feeling ashamed. He doesn’t elaborate. Sam doesn’t push him to.

By the time their food makes it the booth, Dean’s lost whatever appetite he might have had. The waitress gives him a broad smile and a wink, and though he tries to acknowledge her attempts at flirtation with polite disinterest, the half of him that knows _this_ life starts itching for a little attention.

 _Come on_ , he tells himself, winking back at the brunette, _maybe that’s what you need to get back in the swing of things_.

The waitress is pretty enough, wouldn’t be hard to get off at least, and what she lacks in tits she makes up for with ass and lips. She’s got a big generous mouth that he knows would feel great wrapped around his dick, and thick hair he can card his fingers through while she does it.

But then he thinks of his little Gabriella, the way he used to brush her hair before bed time, before she grew up and chopped it all off and went to college.

He wonders what the waitress’ father would think if he knew his daughter had dropped to her knees in front of a stranger in a dirty bathroom stall.

He wonders what _he_ would do if someone did that to his daughter, what _Cas_ would do.

Dean’s going to be sick.

“You don’t look so good,” Sam chimes in unhelpfully, pushing his glass of water toward Dean, “drink this.”

Dean can only muster a scowl in response.

It’s difficult to ignore his brother’s command, hard to turn his head away and ignore the fact that Sam is just trying to help. The entire scenario feels too close, too familiar – the brother he had in the Djinn world was a doctor, one who always answered the phone in the middle of the night, no matter the time, just so Dean could ask questions about fevers and infant Tylenol. That Sam had given Dean’s children all their check-ups and shots, had nursed them through the worst of their illnesses.

The Sam sitting across from him might know how to stitch up a wound, but he’s not a doctor, never will be.

“I’m fine,” Dean supplies, using one of the napkins to wipe the budding beads of sweat from his face.

“No, you’re not,” Sam growls, teetering on the edge of his patience, but before he can continue his annoying tirade, a young child in the booth next them starts to scream.

The child’s tantrum doesn’t last long, maybe a couple of minutes, but it strums the strings of Dean’s heart until it’s playing a melancholic chord. He remembers those years when Jem was just a toddler and it was nearly impossible to take him anywhere in public. He was such a good kid, so sweet and articulate, but he could never handle being in a noisy restaurant around a crowd of people. It had something to do with his Asperger’s, he remembers, though he can’t remember the name for it. Some kind of sensory disorder.

He glances over at the booth. The poor mother’s ears are red with embarrassment as she tries to keep the child docile, clearly ashamed of her son’s behavior. Most of the diner’s patrons ignored it, enjoying their meals regardless of the noise, but a few people keep darting nasty frowns in her direction as if it will actually help.

“Ugh,” Sam complains, rolling his eyes as he shoves a forkful of salad in his mouth, “I wonder what it’s like to eat _without_ hearing asshole kids.”

Dean’s still tottering with nausea, barely able to move without feeling like he’s going throw up all over the place. His skin is clammy and damp, the back of his throat is thick with Nyquil residue and he’s sweating like he’s going through menopause, and yet he’s still able to reach across the table and yank his little brother forward until they’re face to face.

“The kid’s not an asshole, Sam. You are,” Dean chokes out, tightening his grip on Sam’s shirt. He stares at his brother, unblinking, waiting until he can see the message has been received loud and clear. “For fuck’s sake, have a little compassion.”

He releases the bunched fabric in his hands, but Sam remains solidified in his hunched-over position, gawking at Dean like he just said ‘yes’ to Michael or something.

“You’re kidding, right?” Sam intones, one eyebrow arching up in disbelief, “I mean, what was it you said at that convention? You asked that scalped kid who gave him the ‘high n’ tight’. You’re not exactly Mister Friendly.”

“Ghost,” Dean corrects, because talking to a dead person is obviously so much different than speaking to a real child. Besides, he hadn’t slipped into that other world yet, hadn’t known what it was like to have a son with particular quirks and differences that other people liked to stare at and make fun of. “Wasn’t a real kid, so shut up. For all you know the boy over there could have a disability. You don’t know what it’s like to have to go through that, okay?”

“And you do?” Sam asks, narrowing his eyes. He leans back in the booth with a suspicious expression, crossing his arms.

Dean knows he’s backed himself into a corner, but he refuses to give up the point. “I’m just sayin’, Sam, go easy on him. The world is full of noises, right? People get all huffy about kids in restaurants without ever stopping to think about all the noises _they_ make that might be irritating. Like you, opening your mouth and bitching about something stupid. Who the fuck cares, Sam. Get over it.”

Sam takes a deep breath, his eyes trained on Dean and not wavering for a single moment. He secedes the issue, doesn’t ask any more questions or accuse him of something Dean can’t deflect.

That look doesn’t leave his brother’s eye, though, that _I know you’re up to something and I’m going to figure it out_ look, but Dean still counts it as a win. He can’t really afford any more losses right now.

Sam returns to his salad, but Dean just stares at his burger and wishes the food would somehow eat itself.

Cas loved burgers. They were his favorite, and he didn’t even care too much about how the burger was cooked or what was on it. He’d devour a grilled patty smothered in mustard just as fast as he’d eat a two-day old microwaved one. Jem never cared for them too much, too many textures and colors for his palette, but Gabby took after her daddy and ate them just as devotedly as Cas had.

So when he looks down at his bacon cheeseburger, all he can think about his is husband and daughter ( _not real they’re fake and never existed it was all in your stupid head)_ and it makes the spit in his mouth sour.

“Can you just get this to-go for me, Sammy?” He asks, trying to sound as small and helpless as possible. It was a tactic he used on his husband more than once when he wanted something, and he hopes it will work on his brother just the same. “I don’t feel that great. I’m going to the car.”

Sam stops chewing, looking at Dean with a penetrative stare like he’s got x-ray goggles or some shit. He nods after a moment, adding, “I’ll be out in just a minute, too. I’ll flag the waitress for some carry-out boxes. Go ahead.”

Dean is more grateful than he’s ever been in his ( _this_ ) life.

He leaves the food on the plate, rising to his feet and excusing himself. He makes a quick stop to the table with the young boy, giving the mother a twenty dollar bill and an apology for his obtuse, loud-mouth little brother.

The mother cries and thanks him, explaining that her son is autistic.

Dean says yeah, he has an autistic son too: high functioning, in college, but autistic nonetheless.

He doesn’t even feel like he’s lying or being too generous when he says it. He just hopes his brother wasn’t paying attention when the whole thing played out.

By the time Dean makes it out to the Impala, he’s not feeling too good. He was already lightheaded and sweaty and irritated, but he had hoped it was due to Sam’s persistent idiocy rather than any actual illness. He discovers fairly quickly though that the way he feels is more of a concern than he originally thought.

Dean’s legs are gelatin, his arms are trembling and he can’t shake the queasy vines growing in his stomach and spouting up his throat. He just wants to finish off the last of his Nyquil and sleep for the rest of the trip, a dreamless respite from reality for the next 24 hours until they have to rid their old babysitter’s house of whatever’s haunting it.

When his hand reaches the door, gripping the handle loosely with slightly numb fingers, he drops the ground. He doesn’t even have the presence of mind to catch himself or brace for the fall.

Sam says it’s been two days since Dean’s eaten last, but Dean knows better.

He knows that he was taking bites of food while his brother was watching, only to spit it out the moment Sam’s head was turned. He’s been living on a diet of alcohol and Nyquil for the better part of a week.

Dean couldn’t eat. He couldn’t put a single thing in his mouth without being reminded of what he’d lost, without seeing all the memories that accompanied the foods Sam insisted he needed. He’d eat a bite of pizza and remember that Jem’s favorite was pepperoni with pineapple. He’d take a bite of Chinese and remember the puckered look on Gabby’s face the first time she tried Lo Mein noodles. He’d drink a glass of milk and remember all the nights Cas insisted warm milk with cinnamon was the cure for insomnia.

Everything he did was clouded with those memories; those real, visceral thoughts about the man he loved and the children they raised together. 

Dean just lays on the ground. He doesn’t know what else to do.

He’s been trying, really he has. So hard. He just can’t. There’s a reason he decided to end his life whenever Cas checked out, assuming Dean didn’t take the stairway to Heaven first.

He doesn’t know how long he’s lying there for. He passes the time with thoughts about Cas’ lips, the way his fingertips felt when scratching against his scalp on those nights when the rain was too strong or the wind was too loud. But there’s that prickling sensation on the back of his neck again, subtle like brush of spider legs crawling over a web, and it pebbles his skin.

Dean opens his eyes. The prickling sensation was too strong, too developed to be anything more than just a weird feeling.

Cas is standing above him, staring down in confusion and alarm.

“You’re unwell,” Cas says, and if that isn’t the understatement of the year, Dean will eat his own goddamn boxers.

“Perceptive,” Dean jokes, feeling like being an ass. It’s the first line of defense he can muster, because looking at the angel for too long will make things confusing, make them harder than they need to be.

“I can heal you,” Cas offers, looking down at him through dark, thick lashes. “If you’d like.”

“Not sure what that means,” Dean smiles, wishing more than anything that Cas could actually cure him of everything that hurts, of everything that bleeds. “But if you think you can improve on all this, be my guest,” he jests, making a weak attempt at wiggling his hips.

“I can make you feel better,” Cas offers, his expression softening. “You are my charge, Dean. I do not wish for you to suffer.”

As if Cas knows the meaning of suffering.

“Suffer, huh?” Dean challenges, feeling a spurt of bravery that he hasn’t felt in quite a while, “and just what do you know about suffering, Cas? You’re not even fucking human.”

There’s a long pause in which they both stare at each other, steadfast and determined. Dean feels like he could lay there all day, and he really could. He’s got nothing and nowhere else to be, not other than Sam’s generous charity case for some woman who used to watch them when they were kids. That’s all, and it’s nothing compared the suffering he’s endured in the last week. He could lie there for hours until Cas got bored and fluttered away like the prissy little butterfly that he is.

He tries to ignore the tiny, screaming part of him that wants Cas to stay.

“Humans aren’t the only ones who feel things, Dean,” Cas clarifies, a sharpened edge to his voice, “we wouldn’t even be in this mess if that was not the case. Lucifer and Michael feel too much and they let it cloud their decisions, and I wouldn’t have rebelled if I didn’t also feel so strongly.”

Yeah, Dean supposes that much is true.

It doesn’t change the fact that Cas doesn’t feel strongly about _him_ , about their fictional life together or the children they raised to be good, sympathetic people. For fuck’s sake, they raised a son with a ‘disability’ and he went to motherfucking Cambridge.

Not unlike the way Dean raised his twerp little brother to go to Stanford.

Suddenly, without warning, all the similarities between the two worlds collide and make him feel devastatingly stupid.

Cas had picked Gabriella’s middle name. Grace. Of course he did. Angels don’t have souls, but they have grace.

Jem was far too smart for his age, understood things that most people had to spend a lifetime trying to learn. Didn’t mesh well with others. Had his own unique way of seeing the world. Just like his uncle Sammy.

Little things like that; things make Dean feel like the life he lived in that dream was just a joke, just a slap in the face.

He looks up at Cas, at the dark hair haloed by the bright brim of the sun. He’s young, perfect, beautiful: everything he had been in the dream and more. The Cas he loved so desperately was perfect; attentive, sensitive, careful, and unspoiled. Seeing the Cas above him does nothing to stop the violent rains of loss and guilt from pouring down on top of him.

“I know,” he finally says, completely and utterly defeated. “I know.”

“You need to be well to resist Michael,” Cas intones, wholly disinterested in Dean’s pain, “I can remove the memories of the Djinn dream if they’re bothering you.”

Dean has to take a moment to process that.

Cas, his angel ( _husbandloverfriendsoulmate_ ) wants to remove the entire forty years he lived in the dream so he can resist the temptation to give in to Michael’s offers. He wants to basically kill their children and pour a gallon of bleach into Dean’s brain and call it good.

“Don’t,” Dean pleads, feeling sick over the confusion that haunts him.

“If not for yourself, think of your brother. You need to be well so you can keep Sam from saying yes to Lucifer.”

Ah, a direct kick to the balls. Like Dean doesn’t already know this shit.

Cas has a point, a valid one, but he can’t just let the memories be washed away with an angelic pressure hose like they’re nothing more than dirt on the sidewalk. The half of him that lived and loved that life, that changed diapers and played Frisbee and kissed his husband like the world was ending can’t stomach the idea that it could all be gone in a matter of seconds, can’t even breathe knowing he’s the only one who remembers what those days were like.

But the half of him that knows the world _is_ actually coming to an end, the half of him that sacrificed so much and went to Hell, that died over and over and over again all for the sake of his family and humanity, knows that the memories need to go if he wants any chance of making it through this alive.

“Fine,” Dean relents, the familiar sting of tears welling up in eyes, “do it.”

Cas doesn’t hesitate. He leans down over Dean with focused eyes and reaches out to touch Dean’s forehead with those long, beautiful fingers that he loved so much. He remembers those hands and all the things they’ve done, the things they’ve yet to do. He remembers holding them with his own and brushing his lips over the knuckles more than once.

“Love you,” Dean says, not entirely on purpose. He just wanted to say it once more, wanted Cas to hear it before Dean forgot he ever said the words at all.

Cas pauses, his face scrunching up in confusion before his eyes widen; bright and blue and owlish. Dean remembers those, too.

“Sam’s coming,” Cas says, and then he disappears with the flutter of wings and the rustling of his trench coat.

Fucking asshole.

Sure enough, Sam comes out of the diner and sees Dean’s embarrassing predicament immediately. He jogs over to Dean, nearly dropping the bag of food and crouching down to make sure he’s alive. Sam’s broad hands are everywhere - running over his chest to check for wounds, grabbing at Dean’s head and face, trying to roll him over to check the rest of him – and it takes a minute for Dean to gather his senses enough to put his brother at ease.

“Stop, Sam, I’m fine,” he insists, trying to bring himself up to his feet. He fails, of course, his brother catching him before he hits the ground for a second time.

“What the fuck, Dean? What the hell is going on with you?” Sam demands, grabbing Dean by the elbow and dragging him up. He’s pissed, that much is obvious, and Dean’s probably not going to get away without eating or sleeping for much longer.

“Said I’m fine, doc, don’t worry about it,” Dean supplies, followed quickly by, “shit, wrong brother.”

“What?” Sam asks, practically shoving Dean into the car and tossing the food in his lap. “No, forget it, I don’t want to know. But you need to eat, _now_. Eat your fucking burger or I’m calling Cas _and_ Bobby, got it?”

“ _Eat your fucking burger_ ,” Dean mimics, searching through the bag for his to-go box. He pops open the lid and puts a french fry in his mouth. “Happy?”

“More,” Sam instructs, walking over to the driver’s side and getting in behind the wheel. “For chrissakes, Dean, we’ve got a job to do.”

Sam’s right, Dean’s gotta start playing ball before they kick him off the team entirely. He’s just too stubborn to admit that out loud.

It’s not until a few hours later, after Dean’s eaten the entire burger and half of the fries that he wonders why Cas didn’t erase the memories before he flew off like a startled pigeon.

Dean’s kind of glad he didn’t.


	4. I Don't Wanna Love Somebody Else

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I Don't Wanna Love Somebody Else - by A Great Big World

Dean fucked up big time, and he has no one to blame but himself.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Dean could blame Cas if he really wanted to, if he were feeling bitter and resentful enough. If the angel had just scrubbed his brain with a little extra-strength celestial soap like he had asked before scurrying off like a roach in sunlight, Dean wouldn’t have missed the blatant signs that Sam wasn’t exactly…himself.

The day had started off well enough.  They spoke to Donna and met her family, saw the carvings in her daughter’s stomach, and then sent them away for a few days so he and Sam could solve their little problem. It was a poltergeist, just like they suspected, and though Dean wasn’t exactly feeling up to the task, he thought a routine hunt might help get his brain back in order.

Thanks to Sam, Dean managed to eat a full meal and sleep for five hours straight the night before, so despite the onslaught of memories crowding his head, he wasn’t feeling too shabby; better than he has in the last week, at least, which had to count for something. He showered, washed his clothes, and drank half a bottle of water to give his liver a break, too.

He may have been a bit too optimistic, though. Not about the case, but more about his ability to talk to Sam. Dean was feeling particularly vulnerable, a word he’d loath to use to describe himself, but the burden of both lives in his head was becoming more than he could carry. Seeing Donna and the life she had now seemed like an easy way for Dean to segue into confessing about the Djinn dream. He wasn’t excited to talk about it, but things were starting to get really confusing and he realized he needed some help.

But when Dean asked Sam about his opinion on settling down, getting married and raising a couple of rugrats, his brother just shook his head and said it’s not really his thing anymore.

The words deflated the tiny bubble of confidence Dean had managed to muster, so he decided to just keep his mouth shut on the subject. He can understand; it wasn’t something Dean ever saw himself having either, wasn’t a real desire of his until after he already lived it, and it’s not like the Winchesters had ever had much luck in that particular area of their lives.

It didn’t take long for Dean’s plan of silence to backfire. It almost cost him his life, almost resulted in Sam unintentionally saying yes to Lucifer, and there wasn’t anything Dean could even say in his defense. He dropped the ball and nearly fucked everything up for the entire planet.

The memories made things incredibly confusing. It was bad enough when they were interrupting his thoughts throughout the day, when they were just popping up uninvited and making him want to jump in front of traffic, but now they’d blurred the lines between this world and the dream and Dean can no longer keep them straight.

The two worlds in Dean’s mind are bleeding into each other, staining his real memories with flickers of the fake ones. They seep into other gaps in his brain and swell until they burst, splattering every corner of his consciousness. He can’t remember which traits and habits belong to which realm, can’t remember what behaviors belong to his real brother and which ones should have never existed in the first place. Dean gets dizzy just trying to keep up, second guessing every little thing he or his brother does to the point of madness.

He can’t trust himself, he learns, not when the world is depending on them to get shit right. Dean hardly knows who he is anymore, let alone who his brother and the angel are, too. He can’t keep the dream locked down or separate from this world, and if he had the guts to do, he’d pray to Cas and beg him to take it all away.

When Sam had asked so eagerly to drive the Impala, it took Dean a moment to try and figure out if that was normal. He knows that one of his brothers loved the car to pieces, loved to take it on the back roads and see what their baby could do, but Dean doesn’t remember which brother those memories belong to. Does the real Sam love to drive? Or was it the fake one?

But it wasn’t just the car; Sam was doing a lot of stuff that Dean couldn’t pinpoint, couldn’t determine whether or not it was typical. His brother called himself Master Chief while in the basement where Maggie Briggs was buried, and that seemed pretty strange, too. Hadn’t he and Sam played Halo together? Were those memories real, or were they from the dream?

Dean remembers the stupid way Sam would contort his whole body like he was some kind of human joystick, like it would actually help his character move the way he wanted it to. He remembers sticking each other with those little blue explosives, sniping each other from distant towers, and seeing who could go the longest without taking a break to piss.

It’s weird, he decides, but chooses to ignore it. For all he knows, Sam is acting exactly like he always has, and Dean’s the only one doing anything differently. It’s like someone put his brain in a blender, and the mushy, soupy aftermath spills from his ears any time he tries to think too hard.

Every expression on Sam’s face seems like it could be wrong. The way his brother is carrying himself, the way he moves his hands or chews his food – all of it could be wrong, or all of it could be right. Eventually, after a long and baffling day on the job, Dean gives up trying to figure it out.

It took Sam enthusiastically boasting about going home with an older woman for the warning bells to finally signal in Dean’s brain. Sam never picked up random women like that, and he certainly never crowed about it like some kind of virgin. The Sam from the dream was happily married, that much Dean knows for sure, and the real Sam was always too hung up on Jess. Sure, Sammy got laid, but he was never bouncing off the walls about it.

Dean managed to pull his head out of his ass long enough to get his brother back and take Gary home.

“All that apple pie family crap, it’s stressful,” Sam had said in the aftermath, shaking his head, “trust me, we didn’t miss a damn thing.”

Dean felt hollowed out and empty at the words, like he was running on the fumes from the burn of defeat. He couldn’t tell if what was inside him was pity or sorrow, if he felt bad for his little brother or if he just felt bad for himself. It angered him that Sam thought he knew all there was to know about family, that he could just decide after a single day whether or not that kind of life was worth it.

Dean was the only one between them who actually lived it, who knew exactly what they could never have. He kept his face as neutral as possible when he said, “Or we don’t know what we’re missing,” and left it at that.

But that was nearly a week ago. Six days since he last saw Cas, since he said the words he used to say every day in the dream. Words he wishes he could be saying now as he stares at the handprint on his shoulder.

He traces the outline of the mark Castiel left on him, wishing the angel’s hand was on him instead. The motion was oddly familiar, though he never had this mark in the dream. He had the bruise on his temple, the patch of darkened skin that never recovered from the fall. He remembered tracing with the pads of his fingertips when he was feeling low, when he needed a reminder that he was lucky to be alive. Dean supposed the mark on his shoulder is much the same: a scar that means he was dead once, could be dead again.

Sometimes, more often than not, he wished he was.

҉     ҉     ҉

That night, Dean finally dreamt something that wasn’t about what he’d lost. For the first time in two weeks, he had a mild respite from the ghosts of his children that follow him during the day, from the constant guilt in his heart that he’s alive when his soul mate is not. They’re strippers, and it’s kind of exciting to watch them dance and touch each other. He forgets about the forty years in Hell, forgets about the other life he misses so much, and allows himself to relax. Though it’s just a dream, a tiny part of him is relieved to find a piece of his old self again.

Then Anna drops in and starts running her mouth about prison in the Promised Land, and how Cas is the one who put her there.

Figures.

They’re dropped into the past like a couple of dice and have no idea what they’re doing. Cas can’t help; he’s coughing up blood and collapsed on the sidewalk, and Dean would be a big fat liar if he said the sight of it didn’t make him sick. He had to resist the urge to fall on the ground beside him, wrap his arms around his husband and beg Sam to save the man he loves.

But this Sam isn’t a doctor, and this Cas isn’t human. A minor relief, thankfully, because that means Cas is probably going to be alright.

Dean still has to take precaution; angel or not, he’s not going to leave Cas to his own devices without making sure he’s somewhere safe first. Ignoring the way his heart jackrabbits in his chest, Dean checks Cas into a nearby hotel where he can sleep it off and recharge.

He sneaks in a small kiss, just a little one against Cas’ hairline. He tucks the angel into bed and wishes more than anything that he could just curl up beside his husband and stay there. It hurts to leave, hurts to go back outside where Sam is waiting for him, but they’ve got to make sure that Anna doesn’t kill his parents and prevent Sam from ever being born.

Dean tells his mother, though, that it’s okay. He tells her to leave John and save the world. He feels guilty for saying it, hates that a part of him wishes she would comply simply so that he’ll never have had that damn dream. Not being born at all seems far better in comparison.

Except it’s too late. Of course it is. She’s already pregnant.

Then Sam is dead, impaled through the gut with a piece of metal and Michael is wearing his father’s body like an ill-fitted suit, rubbing the whole thing in Dean’s face.

Michael promises him whatever he wants. He saunters around the dimly lit room with a smug smile and looks at Dean with ice in his eyes. It’s scary, for lack of a better word. He’s nothing more than a long-tailed field mouse and Michael is the fat cat who cornered him.

“I know what you really want,” the archangel pushes, John’s young voice smooth and certain as he steps closer, “I can give you back that life, Dean. All you have to do is say yes.”

Dean takes a deep breath in a weak attempt to settle himself, to stop the way his body shakes under the weight of Michael’s heavy stare. It’s a low blow; the bastard knows how desperately he wants that life back, how he’d give almost anything to hear his children’s voices or wake up in his husband’s arms again. If there was anything Dean might actually say yes for, that would be it.

Of course Dean says no, though it may have taken him a few shameful, selfish minutes to answer.

҉     ҉     ҉

They’re back in their own motel, in their own time.

Sam got drunk and passed out on one of the beds, and Cas is equally zonked on the other. Dean had planned on getting wasted, especially since Sam gave him the green light to do so, but when Cas appeared in the room and couldn’t even stand on his own, that plan was tossed in the trash. It was hard enough seeing his husband bloody and barely conscious, and even harder to remind himself that the angel isn’t actually his husband, never was.

He could get drunk if he really wanted to, but Dean knows it’s not a good idea. It would only end with his own embarrassment and he can’t afford to lose what little sense of self he has left. He’d probably end up in bed beside Cas, clutching at him like a lovesick whore and crying about things only he remembers. Sam would either make fun of him or start prying more deeply, and Cas would just stare at him with cold, empty eyes before flying off and never coming back.

If he’s lucky, Dean might be able to get away with another kiss while they’re both dead to the world. He’s tempted to walk over to Cas right now, place a gentle hand over the curvature of his throat, and steal a kiss from the lips he knows are soft and pliant.

No, Dean won’t do that. He told himself it was okay to kiss Cas’ hairline back in that other hotel, but taking another while the angel is unconscious is dancing on a fine line he doesn’t want to cross. The lack of consent and the fact that it’s not really his husband would make Dean more a creepy pervert than he wants to be.

But he can’t sleep, not with both beds taken and the memories of the dream life so fresh in his mind. If seeing Cas is painful, then watching him while he sleeps is practically self-flagellation.

How many nights in that life did Dean spend sleepless? How many times did he stare at his beautiful lover, breathe his lover’s air while pressed up against the heat of his body?

Too many. Not enough.

Dean sits at the little table with Sam’s laptop. He doesn’t know what else to do, can hardly think straight with Cas so close yet so far out of reach. He considers watching porn or playing games, and even entertains the idea of changing all his little brother’s bookmarks just to piss him off. He could change the background picture, too – make it something embarrassing or at least worth looking at, since the default photo is generic and lame.

Dean was going to do those things, he really was, but when he clicks on the search bar and his fingers land on the keys, he ends up typing something very different than what he planned.

Jeremy Winchester.

He searches Google for a person he knows doesn’t exist. He’s just curious, just wants to see what shows up. He knows better than to think he’ll find his son, but Dean has been through a tremendous amount of unbelievable shit lately and it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen. It would actually be fairly insignificant in comparison. After all, he did just travel in time with an angel to save his pregnant mother, and saw his brother die and come back to life. Again.

After a few minutes of searching and finding nothing significant, he tries looking for Jem Winchester, then Gabriella Winchester and even Gabby Grace.

Nothing. Not his children, anyway. All the results are of people he doesn’t know, hasn’t seen before. All someone else’s child.

Then he tries Big Springs, Nebraska.

It’s a real place. The town actually fucking exists.

Dean reads everything about it that he can find. There’s not much, though, it’s just a small town on the Colorado border with barely four hundred residents who call it home. He scrolls through picture after picture, staring longingly at each and every one, shocked and a little terrified of how accurate his dream life had been. There’s even a green patch of grass and trees called Eiker Park, and Dean thinks he’s going to throw up.

He doesn’t remember Big Springs, not in this life. He doesn’t remember going there for a case, doesn’t think he’s ever spent any time there that would explain the vivid, accurate detail he so clearly got right in the dream. Did the Djinn put that town in his head? Did it create a world using its own experiences rather than Dean’s?

Christ, does that mean the home he and Cas shared is real? Does the house he raised his children in actually exist?

Sam starts to stir on the bed, grunting and groaning about something as he flips over and starts to snore. Dean practically slams the laptop lid, jumping back a little in his seat in a pathetic attempt not to get caught red-handed.

He wonders what the likelihood is that Sam will notice if they happen to drive through Nebraska on the way to their next case.

҉     ҉     ҉

Their next case isn’t quite what Dean was expecting, and he doesn’t even get to sneak through Big Springs to get there.

People are eating each other, shoving food down their gullets and fucking in the streets.

It doesn’t take them long to figure out what’s going on. Famine is in town and making everyone go batshit crazy for the things they desire most. They’re eating, drinking, and fucking each other to death in a way that’s far less sexy than Dean imagined it would be. Death by sex is something Dean mused about since he had his first wet dream, but seeing all the blood congealed in pools and splattered on the walls made him rethink that particular fantasy.

He manages to keep himself together despite Cas’ constant presence. He’s relieved that his angel was able to recover from the time travel, is happy to see him together in one piece without blood seeping from his mouth and nose, but the relief is short lived. Cas starts eating burgers with an alarming frequency and the realization of what that means starts pissing Dean off.

Cas craves meat, craves it like he’s the fucking Hamburglar, and hardly seems to notice Dean in the process.

It kills him, guts him so deeply and he can’t even pinpoint why. Everyone around him is bitten by their deepest desires, fueled by their most basal needs to the point of killing themselves. They can’t get enough, can’t breathe without having their needs fill every one of their senses, and all Cas wants are low budget, dollar menu slabs of meat.

He doesn’t want Dean. Can’t even stop eating long enough to make eye contact.

It’s his own fault for being so hurt by that. Dean should really know better by now, should know that Cas will never love him like he did in the dream. It’s a futile thought to try and entertain when all it does is eviscerate him and leave his insides to spill out on the floor.

But he also knows that this Cas is inside a vessel, and once again Dean finds himself a little grateful for that. Everyone else is dying from their addictions, but at least the angel can eat hundreds of burgers and still be fine.

Dean’s other problem is that the thing he wants most isn’t real, doesn’t exist. He fell in love with the imaginary, aches for people who were never born, and frantically yearns for an impossible man who was always a little too good to be true. What he craves is essentially a dark, bleak hole missing from his soul, and there’s nothing and no one to fill the crater of the impact the dream world left behind.

Famine’s claws are sharp and barbed, snaring each victim one by one until the entire town is going crazy. Even Sam goes pale and sweaty with need, insisting that he be locked up and chained down so he can’t get to the blood his body is writhing for.

To an outsider, it makes sense why it seems as though Dean hasn’t been snared like the rest of them. He’s not shoving food in his mouth or dry humping a stranger, not chugging a bottle of whiskey or going face first into the deep fryer. Dean’s been Famine’s victim since they first arrived, since the moment Cas showed up and gave them a lesson about grown, naked cherubs. That overwhelming hunger sank its teeth deep inside of Dean and latched on to the empty void, to that part of him that craves what doesn’t exist, swelling the emptiness until it was the only part of him left.

Then Famine reaches his long, gross, liver-spotted hands to Dean’s chest. “That’s one deep, dark nothing you got there, Dean.”

He can’t disagree.

҉     ҉     ҉

“That’s not him in there, not really,” Cas intones, leaning against the wall beside the panic room door.

Dean just takes another swig of whatever cheap bottle of liquor Bobby had upstairs, not caring enough to look at the label or how much is left.

He knows it’s not really Sam, knows that the endless wailing and clattering of metal on metal is just the demon blood leaving his little brother’s system.

He also knows that this Sam isn’t the brother he finds himself missing, finds himself _needing_. He hadn’t realized how much he leaned on Sammy in the dream world, that he’d miss it just as much as he misses everything else.

“I know,” is all he can really say.

Dean doesn’t get why Cas seems to suddenly care or why he’s even here in the first place; the fact that Cas is bothering to comfort Dean at all makes him nervous and wary and weak. He can’t afford to let the attention cloud his thoughts, can’t let that duplicitous hopeful emotion slither back into his veins.

Then Cas starts talking again, assuring him that Sam just needs to get it out of his system.

For once, the angel’s eyes aren’t pools of glittering frost, aren’t cold and clinical and calculating. They’re shadowed like a moon-dark ocean and soft with worry.

Cas is looking at him like it matters; beholding Dean just like he used to.

It’s too much. Dean can’t breathe.

He goes outside in a frantic bid for space, checking behind himself to make sure Cas didn’t follow him. There aren’t words for how utterly low Dean has dropped, for how much further he can sink before it’s all too much.

He prays for help. It doesn’t come.

҉     ҉     ҉

Bobby has to kill and burn his wife for the second time.

“At least you got to spend five days with her, right?” Dean tries, recognizing the despair in Bobby’s hollowed, broken semblance.

“Right,” Bobby sighs, his chest rising and falling with unbelievable effort as if the burden of breathing is more than he can bear, “which makes things…about a thousand times worse.”

It forces Dean to reconsider his own priorities for a moment, makes him wonder if it would really be worth having the other life back since they’ll all eventually be dead anyway.

He thought he’d give anything for one more day, for one more touch or kiss or bout of laughter. Dean would cut his own arm off with a pair of dull, blunted scissors if it meant he could go back long enough just to say goodbye.

But as he watches Bobby stare limply at the flames, Dean thinks maybe it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.

҉     ҉     ҉ 

There are tons of sultry women here, and Dean is determined to fuck one of them before the end of the night.

They’re all dressed up and practically begging for it, walking slowly by the booth where he’s sitting alone, hips swaying and hair bobbing with every step. Dean remembers what women feel like beneath their skin-tight clothes, all smooth and silky with painted lips and velvet skin, painted nails and soprano moans. He remembers the florid way they taste, how they smell like candy and hair spray and roses, the way their eyes are wide and kitten-like beneath long, false lashes.

It’s been so long – a lifetime, really – since he’s tried to do this. Not that he’s ever had to try that hard, anyway. Flirting came as naturally to him as breathing, from some innate sense of necessity, he thinks, after watching his father use the power of persuasion to keep their heads above water and their bellies full. It helps that he’s not too hard on the eyes (beautiful, Cas used to say) and his Impala has never failed to seal the deal for even the shyest of his dates.

Picking up women from a bar is a lot like a game of darts. You’ve got to aim as closely to the center as you can: aim too low and the woman won’t believe you, won’t believe that you might be interested in more than just a quick fuck, but if you aim too high she’ll laugh away whatever’s left of your ego. And, like any game or sport that’s ever existed, you can’t just throw the damn dart and expect it to sail home. There’s got to be follow through, needs to have momentum and commitment with a clear target and maybe even a Plan B if the first attempt doesn’t go as intended.

That’s where Dean thinks he’s failing. He came here determined to get laid, but left the drive to follow through with it back at the motel. He’d just been sitting in the booth like a lonely loser, ordering beer after beer and then shot after shot until his eyes went blurry and his lips went numb. Several women gave him the pleasure of their time, asking for his name and if he came here with anyone, peppering their comments with the occasional wink or bleached smile. But every time they finally reach that point, the moment when they both realize they click and want the same thing, Dean panicked and tells them he’s married.

Yet here he is, still sitting in the booth and waiting for a damsel to rescue him from himself.

Sometime between the third and fourth shot, Dean had to admit to himself that coming here wasn’t even about sex. He’s been doing perfectly fine with his hand and vivid memories of Cas from the other life, but the struggle he’s endured with his own identity has been unbearable. Considering how much Dean hates regarding himself as some kind of wayward, soul-searching hippy, the truth is that he has no fucking clue who he is anymore and it’s getting harder and harder to wake up in the morning.

He thought that maybe if he dove head-first back into his old ways, the spell would be broken and he’d be whole again. He’d forget about that other life, forget that he was ever married and had kids, forget about the perfection he got to have before it was taken away. It’s worth a try, and worst-case scenario he gets laid and nothing else.

It should be easy. Just like old times.

But when a pair of long, gorgeous legs approach the booth, all Dean can think about is how they’re still not good enough.

“Married,” Dean blurts, slurring his words a little. It’s almost embarrassing how poorly he handles his liquor these days, but the sensation of molasses on his tongue is new. He remembers being able to speak clearly when drunk before, but ever since he woke up from the damn dream, he can’t drink without feeling like there’s a syrupy weight keeping his tongue pinned to the floor of his mouth.

“Cool,” the woman says, almost bored, “so am I, and I’d like to get home sometime soon. Closing time, pal.”

Dean lifts his head and looks around for the first time in what must have been hours. His eyes scan the empty bar, the dimmed lights, and through the window he can see that only a couple of cars remain. Apparently he missed the fact that he’s much more alone in here than he thought.

“Oh,” he breathes, defeated. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” she promises, patting his back, “need me to call you a cab?”

Dean looks up to decline the offer, to tell her that he’s fine and probably close enough to his motel to walk back, but he’s struck by the wild, vibrant blue of her eyes. They’re so bright and auroral that he wonders for a moment if they’re even real, if eyes that sparkle like that are even natural.

Cas’ eyes were bright, too; lit like the sun was always shining behind them. Sometimes his eyes were muted with greys and flecks of sapphire, and sometimes Dean could see his own reflection as if staring into a crystalline pool of water.

It takes a minute for Dean to realize he’s ogling her, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She actually looks like she’s still a bit bored, like she’s used to this type of exchange with the lingering bar patrons that don’t want to go home.

Dean shakes his head; crawling into the back of a cab sounds as unpleasant as it is impractical, and if he’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t want to be ushered away by a cute skirt like he’s seen happen to other guys so many times before. John taught them better than that, told them how to handle their alcohol enough to appear sober even if they were three sheets to the wind. Appearing drunk is appearing weak, and weakness can get a hunter killed. It makes them targets, easy pickings just like those people in Malta Dean had been trying to save.

He uses the table as leverage to push himself up, leaving the beer bottle where it is on the table as he tries to balance on his own two legs. Christ, he should have known better than to get this wasted without backup - Dean couldn’t defend himself right now if he tried, probably couldn’t even cry for help like the helpless infant that he is – and it doesn’t help that he didn’t tell Sam where he was going.

Considering what happened the last time he was that careless, he really should fucking know better by now.

The bartender places careful hands on Dean’s arm, trying to keep him from falling over, but his head feels far too much like his gut right now to move; sloshy, overfull, too much liquid splashing around and threatening to spill onto the floor. He sucks in a sharp breath, wincing at the throbbing ache building at the base of his skull as he squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for the pain to pass.

“Are you okay?” She asks, bracing more of Dean’s weight to give his weak knees a rest. “Please tell me you have someone picking you up, dude.”

 _Sorry_ , he wants to say again, feeling as pitiful as he probably looks, but keeps his mouth sealed tight. He doesn’t want to risk opening it and puking all over the floor.

She sighs, gently pushing him back down into the booth before rubbing her shoulder for a minute, frowning at the muscles she pinches beneath her skin. Poor girl, trying to brace Dean’s weight like that. It sends another wave of guilt and remorse coursing through him, makes him sink further into the seat and drop his head back against the dark pleather.

Dean doesn’t realize that his eyes have closed until he’s forced to pry his lids open and look down; a pair of delicate hands are searching through his pockets, fumbling around with whatever’s in there until she finds his cellphone and pulls it out. Dean can’t even bring himself to care, doesn’t mind if he’s being robbed or if she plans on killing him next, either. She could be a goddamn demon and he’d still just be sitting there indifferent, counting down the minutes until death released him from the prison of reality. Again.

But he hears a familiar clatter a minute later, sees her drop his phone back down on the table, the screen still bright from use. He’s confused, but doesn’t question it. The answer isn’t worth the breath it would take to ask.

“I called the last dialed number on your phone. Guy says he’s your brother and should be here soon. Scoot,” she commands, pushing Dean to the side. He does his best, moving a couple of feet to the right until he’s leaning against the wall, pressing his forehead against it when he feels how smooth and cool it is. He’s too warm, too flushed, and has far too much clothing on to be comfortable. Then she’s sitting beside him, one hand on the back of his neck tugging at the skin like a lazy massage. It feels nice: helps with the headache. “I’m Sheila.”

Dean grunts in response.

“So,” Sheila starts, clicking her tongue and scratching her nails against his scalp, “any particular reason you got so drunk?”

There’s a fine line between flirting and being nice, Dean knows, though he’s not entirely sure which one is happening right now. He’s wasted, that he much he knows with certainty, but it also means his judgment is askew and he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to respond. Not that he’s in the mood to flirt anymore, not now that he’s thrown any hopes of getting laid or breaking the curse out the window, but the way she’s running her fingers through his hair makes him feel homesick and all he wants to do is melt into the touch.

Dean gathers his strength enough to shift a little in her direction, letting his head fall into Sheila’s hand. She’s just being nice, probably trying to keep him awake and conscious until someone shows up to get him, but he’s practically putty between her fingers as she continues to rub his neck, her palm a warm pillow against his ear.

Cas used to do this for him, would cradle Dean’s head in his hands with heated, expert fingers and lull him back to sleep. There were a lot of things Cas used to do, things Dean took for granted, things he misses so wholly and desperately that the reminder brings tears to his eyes.

“Oh, sweetie,” Sheila croons, suddenly maternal and nurturing. She pulls Dean into a hug, her slender arms attempting to encircle all of him, broad shoulders and all. He finds his face buried in the crook of her neck, canopied by swathes of dark-chocolate hair.

She smells like grenadine and lemons; Jo used to smell that way, too.

Dean lifts his head then, absurdly curious about the shape of her face, the color of her features. Sheila is a long line of satin, a dusky ribbon with ice for eyes and seashell lips. She’s smiling at him with the kind of grace a mother gives her child, sympathetic and enduring, and Dean can’t help but notice the stunning coincidence that she could easily be the female version of his husband.

He wonders if this is some kind of prank, if the trickster is playing him like a chip on a poker table while he’s at his rope’s end, clinging to the remnants of a dream life he can never get back. He wonders if she’s even real, if Sheila’s really a bartender with a kind heart and protective instincts that make her more patient and open than she should be.

If he squints, she could be Cas. He can make this work.

Forgetting that she’s married and wants to go home, Dean reaches an unsteady hand out and cups the back of her neck, pulling her forward into a chaste kiss. He just wanted to test the waters before leaping in, needed to see if her pink lips felt the same as he remembers from the dream, if he could close his eyes and play pretend that he’s right back where he wants to be so badly. Sheila gasps, her eyes blown wide and fearful like a waylaid rabbit.

It’s the wrong reaction, not quite what he was expecting. He’s not going to hurt her, would never hurt an innocent woman, but his whole body is screaming and the hollowed center of his heart is swelling out of control. This is the closest he’s been to Cas since waking up, the closest sensation he’s felt to being real and whole and loved again that he’s not sure he can stop.

She’s not pushing him away, not saying no, just starting at him with those goddamn blue eyes, lined and smudged with black. Sheila is beautiful, angelic with her round, heart-shaped face and rosy cheeks, but when he closes his eyes and kisses her again, all of those details fade away. Dean doesn’t see her, doesn’t smell the cloying syrup; he’s kissing Cas, can taste the chapstick on his lips, can hear the hum of contentment he makes low in his throat.

Cas parts his lips easily when Dean pushes for more, when he leans into the kiss and darts his tongue out for a tentative taste. Cas doesn’t taste like he used to, tastes too much like bubblegum and Sprite and mint, but it doesn’t matter. Dean needs this, needed it for so long that his whole body responds to the way Cas grips his shirt and forces him back; he loves it when his husband gets rough, so erotic and commanding, so much that it sends a chill down his spine and makes him moan.

“You’re so hot,” Cas says, which catches Dean off-guard for a single bleary moment. Cas never used that word before, never called Dean _hot_ like he was some kind of Ken doll or a fucking potato. Cas called him _beautiful_ , said he was perfect and handsome and gorgeous. Dean doesn’t care enough to question it, he’s back in his lover’s arms and the bladed pain is finally starting to subside.

Cas crawls up into his lap, straddling him and pushing the heat of his groin against Dean’s. God, it’s so good, so fucking good that Dean moans again and runs his hands along Cas’ bare thighs before gripping his hips, digging his thumbs into the soft folds of skin there where the legs meet the belly. Cas is teasing him now, tugging on Dean’s collar and forcing their mouths together for a second time.

“I love you,” Dean chants between kisses, pulling Cas closer against his chest, “so much.”

“What?” Cas asks, his movements slowing and becoming awkward and disjointed.

Dean opens his eyes, wants Cas to see him and read the honesty there, wants Cas to know how deeply he means it and that they’ll never part ways again. But as he blinks to clear the fuzzy edges of his vision, reality crashes back into him and he remembers where he is, who he’s with.

Sheila blinks back at him, confused and uneasy. The gloss on her lips is smeared and her cheeks are flushed, and Dean realizes what he’s done.

“Fuck,” Dean spits, shoving Sheila off his lap in violent repulsion, wiping at his clothes like he can brush off the evidence of his infidelity. Christ, the Cas he loves isn’t real and now he can’t kiss someone else without feeling like a two-faced whore. “I’m married!”

Sheila had toppled onto the floor, her face twisted in rejected humiliation as she rights herself and scurries back, shouting, “you came onto _me_ , asshole!”

“Dean?”

Shit. It’s Sam’s voice.

“Get him out of here!” Sheila cries, pulling herself up off the floor, stumbling a bit in her black heels, “that piece of shit assaulted me! I’m calling the cops.”

Sam bounds in like a Labrador ready to strike, gripping Dean’s arm and pulling him out of the booth in a vehement rush. He’s muttering something under his breath, eyes cross with anger and disappointment. Dean lets himself be dragged out and up, but he can’t quite stand on his own yet. He’s so drunk that the world starts spinning, starts blurring around the edges like a vignette, so he’s surprised and a little impressed that he’s able to shout, “So call them!”

He’s not sure if what he said was helpful or even coherent, but he feels a little better for having said it.

“Will you shut the fuck up?” Sam pleads, low and breathy in his ear. Dean has to bite his tongue to keep from saying anything else, to focus his energy on walking rather than falling face-down onto the floor. It’s amazing and a little curious that he feels ten times more drunk now that he’s up on his feet and being ushered outside, the sound of his little brother offering apologies to the bartender fading in the background.

Dean is only vaguely aware that he’s puking. He’s familiar with the tight pull in his gut, with the sound of liquid gushing from his throat, but Dean’s not consciously making an effort to help his body expel the poison he filled it with earlier. He thinks that maybe someone’s hand is on his back, or maybe someone is yelling at him. There’s no real way to tell unless he concentrates on the myriad of sensations rippling through him, and that’s not something he’s willing to do. He’s got enough shit tumbling around his brain right now, thanks.

When Dean thinks that there can’t possibly be anything left his stomach, he sucks in a deep breath and wipes clumsily at his mouth. There’s a smear of lip gloss and bile and something else Dean can’t readily identify on the back of his hand now, maybe blood, and he’s pretty sure this the most pathetic he’s ever been in his life.

“Get in the fucking car, Dean,” Sam growls, nudging him with his foot to reinforce the command. “Thanks to you, we have to find a new place to crash tonight. Can’t exactly afford to be arrested right now, dumbass.”

Right, like there’s ever a convenient time to be slapped with handcuffs.

“I’m calling Cas,” Sam adds when Dean says nothing, when he doesn’t move.

The very thought of seeing Cas right now, seeing the _real_ Cas, sends Dean reeling through a vicious blur of emotion. Hundreds of thoughts and memories pull at his brain, picking it apart in every direction until he doesn’t know which way is up. Sense-memory is fresh within him, revitalized after weeks of being pushed down and suppressed by sheer willpower, bright and blooming inside him like the dream world is alive and tangible. Dean’s lips still buzz from being newly kissed, his heart still flutters with the rush of love and contentment he felt in the booth only minutes before; seeing the angel right now would scrape away the last bits of his sanity and then the world really would come to an end.

For all of two seconds, Dean thinks it might be worth it. It’s not like they’re winning any awards for saving the ungrateful planet, anyway.

But that’s not him; Dean’s never been that much of a coward or a selfish prick, despite how much he’d love to give up and let the weight of the world rest on someone else’s shoulders. He knows the weight would go to Sammy, and even though his little brother is currently using Dean’s ribs as a soccer ball, he can’t do that to him.

“Doan’,” Dean slurs, suddenly aware of just how drunk he sounds. His tongue feels like a paperweight holding the words down before they can escape his mouth. “S’fine, Sammy.”

Sam looks down at him through curious, heartbroken eyes, shadowed by the fringe of his chestnut hair falling over his face. Dean hates it when his little brother looks at him this way, like Dean’s broken and irreparable and gone. It doesn’t happen very often, though it did happen more often than not in that year before Dean went to Hell, but back then he could understand it, make peace with it. He knew Sam was going to miss him, knew Sam was trying so hard to find Dean a way out of the deal, but this is different. There’s an apocalypse before them and Sam’s just as cornered by it all as Dean is, just as trapped and ill-fated by their goddamn Winchester bloodline.

Yet Sam endures, remains strong and steadfast in a way that Dean can’t, not after the dream.

“Fine,” Sam relents, opening the door to the Impala and hoisting Dean up and into the passenger seat, “but we’re talking about this. You’ve been a complete mess ever since Malta, and if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on right now, I’m telling Cas to fly his ass here and help me kick your ass.”

It’s a futile threat, the only real fear stemming from the thought of seeing Cas, but the words burn deep and true as Sam intended. Dean’s been fucking things up left and right, didn’t even realize that some scrawny nerd had taken over his brother’s body until it was almost too late. Keeping the dream a secret has done nothing but harm.

At least this way, when Cas burns the dream and all of its swaying branches from his mind, someone will know it happened. Someone will know that his children existed, that Dean was loved and had a lovely life.

But when he opens his mouth to speak, what comes out of him isn’t what he was expecting, not what he meant. Dean’s aching heart leaps up into his throat and does the talking for him, dropping down to his sleeve and staying there.

“I’m so old, Sam,” he breathes, burying his face in his hands. “I’m so old, so tired.”

Sam just looks at him like he’s being ridiculous, doesn’t understand the meaning behind the self-depreciation. “You’re thirty, Dean. I know I tease you, but come on, you’re not _that_ old.”

“No,” Dean groans, taking another deep breath, “I’ve lived a really long time and I’m just tired. I’m ready to be done, Sam. I’ve lived enough.”

He hopes that what he’s saying is clear enough for his little brother to understand, that the alcohol hasn’t soaked the words into unrecognizable shapes that Sam can’t decipher. Dean doesn’t want to repeat himself, it’s hard enough to speak when he knows he’s being listened to and he doesn’t want to have to say it all again.

Then something on Sam’s face shifts, maybe a brow or the set of his lips, but it changes his irritated, impatient expression into one of sorrow. Sam looks like he’s about to reach out, like he wants to touch Dean in some way to reassure him, but he holds back, keeps his hands to himself.

“Does this…Dean, does this have something to do with someone named Jeremy?”

Shock bursts through Dean like a lightning storm, prickling the hair on his neck and stopping his heart for a full beat, then two. “What?”

Sam frowns, scratching at his arms in nervous habit. “I saw it on the laptop. You, uh…left a tab open, and I saw that you searched for someone named Jeremy Winchester. There was another name too, and a place, but I don’t remember them,” Sam explains, looking guiltier than he should. It’s his laptop, after all, not Dean’s.

Shock ebbs into disbelief, which fades into embarrassment and ultimately shame. Dean can’t believe he was so stupid, doesn’t know anyone else would be that dumb to leave their secrets so open and unprotected for anyone to find. Sam waits patiently for an answer, but Dean is so thoroughly defeated that it takes him another few minutes to calm down enough to speak.

“Yeah,” Dean admits, ignoring the tears welling up in his eyes as he looks away so Sam can’t see.

Sam doesn’t force him to turn back around, thank God. “Who is he?”

And just like that, Dean’s a sobbing mess. It’s shameful how weak he is, how little he can control himself at the utterance of a single word – _is_. Jeremy _was_ somebody, isn’t anymore, and the way the word shreds through him and rips him apart is more than Dean can take.

Jeremy was so smart, so intense, such a curious little boy with quirks that few people understood. He loved movies and popcorn and Lincoln Logs, had a growth spurt when he was fourteen and shot up like a sunflower practically overnight - a full inch taller than Dean. Jem loved books but didn’t like people, loved music but hated loud noises, and he wrote the strangest little stories in a notebook he kept under his mattress. Cas always complained that reading it was snooping, that they were invading their son’s privacy and violating the unspoken contract between parent and child, but Dean didn’t want to stop. He wanted to know what happened to Lenore the Robot and her mysterious yet lovable pet hamster.

Dean had never known another kid who had written their own story at barely eight years old. He had planned on saving the notebook and typing it out, on binding the pages together and giving his son the printed copy when he graduated college, but Jem went on to graduate school and the plan had been temporarily postponed.

“My son,” he finally says through a series of broken sobs, choking on the lumps of air his lungs are starting to reject. Everything hurts, he can’t breathe and his body is still heavy and slow with too much beer and whiskey.

“…you have a son?” Sam whispers, stunned.

Dean nods. It’s all that he can do.

Sam reaches out then and puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean can feel the confusion and doubt emanating from his little brother’s skin, and he wants so badly to clarify, to tell his brother that he was an uncle in a picturesque dream, but he’s too drunk and it’s too much.

“Can we talk about it tomorrow?” Dean whines, starting to feel sick again, “please?”

Sam says nothing for a moment, just stares and breathes contemplates the little piece of information Dean was able to share. His brother looks muddled and a little bit angry, not wanting to let the conversation go another day without happening, but Sam must sense the broken wall inside of Dean because he concedes, saying, “Okay. First thing in the morning.”

҉     ҉     ҉ 

Walt and Roy stop by in the middle of the night to say hello.

Sam goes first, flying backward onto the bed as blood seeps uselessly from the peppering of holes in his chest.

Dean’s next, despite the bickering between his visitors over whether or not he should live.

It hurts a hell of a lot more than he thought it would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An enormous THANK YOU goes out to my new beta, iscatterthemintimeandspace.


	5. All The Way Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All The Way Down - Glen Hansard

Dean blinks, his left cheek twitching against something small and round. It takes a moment for his senses to reach him, for him to realize that the cotton sheets around him and downy pillow beneath his head are too familiar to be a motel’s. The great level of comfort is disorienting, twisted further by the touch of what he thinks to be fragile, fevered skin. He knows this because he’s felt it before, he’s sure of it.

With the subtle turn of his neck, the pillow rustles and the small hand on his cheek stirs in response. Delicate nails scrape against his skin as a fat little foot kicks against his chest.

“Shh, don’t wake him” comes a voice that’s familiar too, muffled slightly by wrinkled sheets draped over their lips.

Dean forces his eyes open then, slow and sticky as his lids may be, propelled by one part curiosity and two parts panic. He’d been in a motel, had fallen asleep in his dirt spackled jeans on top of stiff motel blankets and a lumpy, too-thick pillow – if something that old and used and chunky can even be called that – had dreamt of something abstract and sensual and slow, and then…

Then he awoke somewhere cottony and warm with only a pair of boxers on as a thin barrier from the softness, a deep raspy voice rolling between him and whoever is in the bed beside him.

When his vision clears and the world around him sharpens, he’s nearly shocked into stillness. Dean recognizes the room as his own, knows the portraits on the walls, remembers picking the color of the sheets entwined around his legs.

The little foot kicks at his chest again, jerky and uncoordinated like the curled fist still against his cheek. Dean focuses his attention on the movements, on the wriggling, plump little body pressed against his. He realizes his hand is blanketing the fragile head of an infant – _his_ infant, his _son_ – fingers tangled in a mess of thick onyx hair.

Dean’s eyes lock on a pair of oceanic blue ones, tired and half-lidded with shallow pools of purple beneath them. It all comes to him in a rush then, the memory that this morning had happened once before in a slow, sun-soaked crawl. Their first night home with Jem, the sleepless night that bled into a sleepless morning with bright, golden light blooming in through the window.

He’d almost forgotten how smooth Jem’s hair was, like silkworms had spun the fine strands themselves with delicate, expert care. Dean allows his fingers comb through the dark mop, slightly damp from sweat and clammy autumn air. He’s careful not to wake his son, keeping his movements relaxed and unhurried. “Can’t believe it,” Dean whispers, and it’s nothing but the truth. He said it back then just as he said it now, though the meaning behind the words is different.

The first time, Dean was awash with paternal pride and excitement, endeared so deeply to the squirming little boy fresh from the hospital. He feels that pride now, remembers the rush of fear and delight that accompanied every breath, but the feeling is muted through the thick veil of time. The eyes watching his newborn son now have seen this moment before, have seen thousands of moments just like this one over the years it took to raise two children into adulthood.

He couldn’t believe they’d finally done it, that they’d become three instead of two. But now, Dean can’t believe he gets to see this moment again, gets to look into his lover’s eyes while their child’s belly rhythmically rises and falls between them.

“So beautiful,” Cas says, nuzzling closer to the striped fabric of Jem’s onesie. “He’s perfect.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees easily, reaching over their son to close the short distance between him and his husband, resting his hand on the curve of Cas’ hip.

Cas gives Dean a sleepy, sluggish smile.

 _Oh_ , Dean thinks, his limbs going limp and lax as he sinks further into the moment, _I’m dreaming_.

He should have realized it sooner, should have known as soon as he opened his eyes and saw the mossy green walls and chocolate brown sheets, but Dean’s grown accustomed to the torturous combination of nightmares and sobering disappointment. Rare is the dream in which he enjoys himself, doesn’t want to wake, doesn’t want to let go. There’s a painful symmetry in each of his dragging nightmares: he hears his children crying, hears them calling his name but he can’t find them, can’t reach them. Cas comes and goes, signaled only by the swishing of a trench coat and a cold, impersonal stare.

In the silence, Dean wonders at the possibility that his life as a hunter is fake. He wishes that waking in the frigid, dark, dilapidated building was a symptom of his head injury and not the truth, wants it all to be something he can sweep away with those little blue pills his brother prescribed him after the fall.

But Dean’s a realist. He doesn’t subscribe to fantasy notions that will only leave him aching and bereft when he wakes again in the morning. He’ll take what he can get, though; he’ll let himself have this fleeting memory for as long as it lasts and then tuck it somewhere safe before reality steals it away.

Jem wiggles and twists his middle, his little fists batting at the air as he opens his mouth and wails. Dean uses the hand already in his son’s hair to rub Jem’s fragile head, soothing his baby boy with slow, tender motions. The crying quiets, but Jem is still fussy as he whines and kicks. His fists make their way to his own cheeks, and he turns his head to mouth at his fingers. It’s one of the cutest things Dean has ever seen, and he thanks God or whoever is listening upstairs for this beautiful, much needed dream.

“Aw, look, he’s hungry,” Cas points out, pushing himself up carefully so that he’s sitting upright, back against the headboard. He reaches for a bottle half-full of formula perched in a warmer on the nightstand, passing it to Dean with a grin. “It’s your turn.”

Dean sits upright as well, placing the bottle between his legs to keep it from spilling while he lifts his son from the bed. Jem is so tiny, so pudgy and soft; Dean loves the way Jem’s body feels in his hands – warm, cozy, and everything an infant should be. When he maneuvers his son into the crook of his arm with Jem’s fuzzy head against his chest, Dean has to hold back a sigh of relief. Christ, he misses this.

Jem latches on to the bottle and drinks, his arms and legs relaxing and flopping away from his body. Dean soaks in the feel of his son’s skin against his own, relishes the noisy breaths from Jem’s nose as he lazily sucks on the bottle, half asleep.

“You should sing to him,” Cas suggest, leaning over to kiss Jem’s head, “I bet he’d love that.”

“Yeah?” Dean’s not sure he’s confident enough in his skills not to wake their son with an off-key rendition of a rock ballad, but Cas is pleading with his wide blue eyes and blinking at him in an effort to bat his lashes. He’s still too sleepy to pull off the intended effect, but it works on Dean just as well; he’s such a sucker for his husband and all the ways Cas begs for what he wants.

“Yeah,” Cas says, then, “please?”

Of course. Anything and everything for Cas, always.

Dean takes a deep breath, running through the list of songs in his head that he has memorized. He considers singing Hey Jude, almost opens his mouth to do so, but then he remembers the song he chose the first time, when he sang to his little boy for real.

He clears his throat, licks his lips, and hopes Jem likes it as much as he did back then.

Simple Man isn’t exactly an easy song to sing quietly, but Dean does his best. He pours his heart into the lyrics, knowing his son will grow up to be so smart and curious, knowing he’s sensitive and shy but full of love and loyal to a fault. He’s so perfect ( _was perfect, isn’t anymore, isn’t real_ ) that Dean doesn’t even bother stopping the tears that spill over onto his cheeks.

His voice cracks and breaks over the words as he cries. He expects Cas to say something, prepares himself for the inevitable touch of his husband’s hand on his face to smear away the trail of tears glinting on his cheeks, but Cas doesn’t notice, doesn’t move.

Dean opens his mouth to say his husband’s name, wants to hand him their son so he can go into the bathroom and clean his face in peace, but he’s interrupted by a loud crack and an explosion of color outside his window.

“Shit!” He yelps, startled by the sudden disturbance somewhere outside. He hears another, then a third, bright reds and silvers illuminating the sheer curtain.

Cas seems oblivious; he doesn’t turn or acknowledge the noise at all, doesn’t react to the bursts of color pouring into the room. In fact, Cas is still looking at Jem – he’s talking to Dean, laughing and smiling, having a one-sided conversation with the ghosted memory of the man Dean used to be.

Ah, right. It’s a weird dream, more like a rerun of a favorite episode than something lucid or surreal, but it’s a dream nonetheless.

Setting Jem carefully down onto the bed, Dean gives his little boy a few final kisses; first on his chubby, rosy cheeks, then one kiss for each of his tiny, narrow feet. He doesn’t want to say goodbye already, but the fireworks aren’t part of this memory and he wonders if the two lives he’s lived are bleeding together again, gliding across each other like oil over water.

Dean kisses Cas too, but Cas doesn’t react to it either. It hurts.

He pulls on some sweatpants and a t-shirt from his drawer and makes his way downstairs, taking his time and enjoying the view along the way. He misses this house, his _home_ , and he’s determined to drive to Big Springs when he wakes up. There’s a chance this home exists in the real world, that maybe he’s seen it before and the memory of it was used to construct the Djinn dream. If it’s there, if it’s really in Nebraska like he hopes it is, there’s no doubt in Dean’s mind that he’s going to do whatever it takes to buy the place and make it his own again, make it _theirs_.

The real Cas wouldn’t share it with him, though. Doesn’t love him and doesn’t care. The end of the world is approaching and there might not be any time left to recreate his dream, but he’s going to try anyway. He has to.

The moment Dean steps outside, everything changes. The warm, earthy colors he’d been surrounded by took on a colder, bluish hue, and his home disappears without a sound. His head stops hurting, and everything in his mind seems to settle.

Fireworks burst above him, streaks of blues and greens crackling, fizzing, and washing out the stars. The sky is alive and alight, boasting brilliant sheets of color that bloom and fade and bloom again, paling into white as they die out and make way for the next display. The familiar hiss and boom are old comforts; so are Sammy’s arms, snug around his waist.

Dean looks down at his little brother – and man, it’s been a long time since he’s been able to do that – and gives him a generous smile. He’s not sure how this happening, doesn’t understand the mechanics behind a dream like this; Sam came out of nowhere, so did the open, meadow-like field surrounded by a circle of trees. Dean’s heart goes on strike for a full two seconds; he hates that once again, his husband and their little boy blipped out of existence like they were never there at all, like they don’t matter.

There’s a certain understanding and acceptance that comes along with dreams: it’s what keeps him calm and compliant now, the knowledge that dreams are fluid and change without permission. It’s okay, he thinks, because he got to hold his infant son. He got to sing to his baby and Cas looked at him again with love, need, and warmth.

Now he gets to blow up the sky with his very little brother. Dean supposes he can’t complain.

It’s strange how unblemished this dream is, how clean and uncomplicated. He doesn’t have to wade through muddy waters to know which world this memory is from, doesn’t have to close his eyes and wait for another migraine to release him from barbed, ripping agony before he can focus on the details. Dean’s head feels lighter than it has in a long time, his thoughts come effortlessly, and he wonders to whom he’s indebted for this mercy.  

His head tilts back in appreciation of the view. As far as dreams go, Dean wouldn’t mind having this particular one more often.

Between one blink and the next, the fireworks are gone. The sky is dark and glittering with stars above the jagged tree line, the smell of sulfur and singed grass is replaced with something damp and mossy. Sammy’s gone, too. For a moment, it’s just Dean and the woods and pure, unsullied silence.

Dammit. Two of his favorite memories came to him so wonderfully but left too quickly, vanishing into thin air and leaving him to mourn their loss alone.

Breathing comes easier, which strikes him as a little odd but no less relieving. He can fill his lungs without resistance, can savor the unique, temperate flavor of air that he’s taken for granted up until recently. Dean had been pulled so tightly, had been stretched and extended so far since waking up that there was barely any slack left for him to expand his chest and breathe. 

He’s not used to exploring the depths of his physical sensations in a dream – not in a regular dream, anyway, free from all that Djinn magic – but it’s so goddamn liberating to feel _normal_ that Dean just stands there for a minute and soaks it all in. Rolls his shoulders, wiggles his toes.

It makes sense then when he learns that it’s not a dream, but death. He’s dead and his body is ventilated with holes somewhere on Earth beside his brother.

Thank God.

҉     ҉     ҉

Hearing that he’s somehow managed to make it inside the Pearly Gates without being carded comes as surprise, though. He’s pretty sure that ol’ St. Pete must have been sleeping on the job because Heaven is the last place he expected to wind up. Raised from Perdition or not, Dean always figured Hell’s exit was a revolving door and that he’d circle back there sooner or later.

Cas’ garbled voice instructs him to follow the road, and considering his lack of other places to be, Dean doesn’t hesitate and does as he’s told. He even succeeds in hiding the bitter disappointment that clings to his skin as he starts his Baby and drives; for some foolish, cockamamie reason, Dean finds himself wondering why his husband and children aren’t here, too. Sure, he started off this whole shebang with his baby in his arms and in bed with his husband, but they’re gone now and he’s not sure why they ever left. It’s not that he had any expectation of what Heaven what would be like, not like he thought he’d end up in Heaven, there just seems to be a big discrepancy between what he’s seeing and what he’d like to see. That’s all.

Dean finds his brother sitting amicably at a dining table with a very young girl’s hand creeping slowly up his thigh. Sam is obviously uncomfortable and jerking away from the touch, and Dean would find that hilarious if it weren’t so disconcerting. He’s got to say, whoever reported Heaven to be the ultimate paradise must have been slightly exaggerating. Aside from the brief but pleasant trip down memory lane, the experience so far has been underwhelming.

It comes as no shock that Sam doesn’t believe it, either.

They figure out pretty quickly that they’re not technically in Heaven, not yet. Their lives are flashing before their eyes in a pitifully uneventful manner, and they can’t even stop to relive their own greatest hits without being sent on yet another mission to save themselves and the world. Dean would be pissed if he wasn’t so used to the continual let-downs, if a part of him wasn’t already expecting the other shoe to drop.

Leave it to the angels to make dying a bigger pain in the ass than being alive.

On the bright side, Dean’s mind is still sharp and whole. The ragged segments have melded together, and there’s no delay between the time he tells his body to do something and the time his body actually does it. He’s not trying to sweep bits and pieces of his memories under the rug to be dealt with later, he’s not confused or saddled with splitting, unrelenting pain. Even when he dove behind the strange family’s couch and listened to Cas spout some biblical crap about Joshua and the proverbial Road to Heaven, Dean was feeling rather pleased with his state of mind.

When he saw on Cas on the television, Dean knew exactly which one he was talking to. He didn’t have to wrestle with the riven halves of his brain, didn’t slip into the chasm between reality and his long-lost reveries; he had a conversation without wanting to take a mallet to his skull, and Dean’s willing to do just about anything to prolong that internal peace.

If that means he has to play a game of scavenger hunt with an ass full of angels, so be it.

҉     ҉     ҉ 

Mary makes Dean a sandwich and pours him a glass of milk.

God, he needed this. Badly. The reminder that love exists so openly and genuinely in the real word is a remedy for the flayed bits of his soul that he never thought could be stitched back together. Motivation has been in short supply these days, but he finds it now in his mother’s unfettered smile and the warmth of her delicate embrace. She calls him her little angel, cups his cheeks between her rounded, dainty palms.

Dean is beyond grateful that he can have this moment, however brief and fleeting it may be. It pokes at the ache still cradled in his heart where he keeps the memories of his own children safe, makes him wish he could hug his son or brush the hair from his daughter’s face. They were never real, and maybe they don’t have a place in the afterlife, but seeing his mother so young and beautiful and full of light seems like a mighty fine consolation prize in comparison.

He doesn’t want to leave, though he knows he must. Sam has been more than patient and the memory is waning anyway. Besides, if this cherished highlight with Mary and the light show with a younger Sammy are anything to go by, there’s a good chance he’s got something even better coming his way next.

҉     ҉     ҉

Dean really hates it when he’s wrong.

It’s Sam’s turn, apparently. He doesn’t care about that, but he does care that his brother’s fond, precious memory turns out to be one of Dean’s most detested nightmares: Flagstaff.

Sam strokes his hands through the mutt’s golden fur, feeds it from the beat-up box of pizza and sits down on what appears to be a very lumpy couch. He’s smiling – of course he is, the ignorant bastard – and it pushes the snaking tendrils of resentment and riled bitterness deep into his gut. Yeah, Sam was just a snot-nosed punk who wanted to be one of the Boxcar Children, Dean can forgive his brother for that – but this? Knowing that Sam cares more about his impromptu vacation than the suffering he put his family through makes Dean feel sick, makes him want to hit someone.

Maybe he’ll just punch Sam and call it even.

It’s such a nauseating contrast from the blissful setting they were just in; Dean went from secure and serene to _this_ , to Sam’s poor excuse of a memory masquerading around as something _good_. It’s a waste of time and brain space as far as Dean is concerned, and he doesn’t care about the sullen puppy dog eyes he’s getting from both his brother and the stupid, hairy pooch.

Sam apologizes, but Dean’s had enough of this place. He’s tired of thinking about the irrefutable fact that he’s spent his entire life watching over his little brother, making sure Sammy was safe and healthy, and knowing that once again he falls on the wrong side of unrequited love. It doesn’t matter who it is: Cas, Sam, even John – the relationships he builds are either remarkably lopsided or turn out to be completely fictional.

Dean is sulking and pouting hard enough that when he twists the knob and walks through the doorway, he barely notices the abrupt change in his surroundings.

He expected a change - that’s why he walked through the damn door, after all – but it takes a minute for Dean to realize that the colors around him are deeper and richer than they should be, brighter and more heavily saturated than the world he knows to be real. It’s the same hue as the memory he woke up in, the same golden glow that blanketed his little family as they cuddled in bed.

Shitfuck. Dean knows what that means.

It’s his turn now, but instead of entering a memory from the real world, one Sam would recognize and know to be true, they’re going to relive a moment from the Djinn dream and he won’t be able to keep it a secret anymore. Sam’s going to see his marriage or his children or both, and whenever they make their way out of this mess, he’ll have to explain everything in horrible, agonizing detail.

 _Please, no_. He’s not ready for that.

It comes anyway, ignoring Dean’s internal pleas for it to disappear before it really begins. He doesn’t know why he bothers with prayer at all; it never fucking works, no one’s listening to him and whatever leverage he thought he had as a vessel never comes in handy. He’s in Heaven for chrissakes, the one place he shouldn’t have to endure this kind of exposure and humiliation.

And to think he actually thought death would be a respite from the pain. Ha.

Sam comes in behind him, gawking at the tiled floor and white walls and gaggle of nurses walking about. It’s a weird concept to have ended up inside a hospital after exiting Sam’s little Arizona clubhouse, and Dean doesn’t recognize the memory right away which makes it all the more confusing. He knows the hospital – it’s the one in Ogallala where Doctor Sam worked, where Dean’s Djinn dream first started. He’s been in this hospital countless times for countless reasons, and the fact that he’s not sure which memory this is unsettles his gut; twists it around in new and interesting shapes until Dean’s certain he’s going to be sick.

“Where are we?” Sam asks, looking around with a baffled, irritated expression. Dean can’t blame him, he’s getting pretty tired of all the changes as well, especially now that he knows Sam is going to see something Dean doesn’t want him to.

“Not sure,” Dean says, and it’s only a half lie. He still hasn’t figured out which memory this is, but he knows damn well it’s not Sam’s.

They’re in the waiting room of the hospital. There are several rows of black pleather chairs and a glass case off to the side filled with awards, several of which belong to Dean’s fictional brother. Portraits hang along the wall, and though Dean finds the one of his brother immediately, Sam doesn’t seem to notice it. Dean fidgets for a moment, beads of sweat gather along his hairline and the nape of his neck heats against his will. He’s certain that any moment now, Sam’s going to figure it out and start hounding Dean for information.

Right as Dean thinks he’s going to explode or pass out from lack of oxygen, a familiar looking nurse comes down the hallway and approaches him with a smile. He smiles back, reading her nametag with the hope it will help trigger bits of his memory, but nothing comes. “They’re ready for you,” she says, looking only at Dean and waving her hand for him to follow.

He just shrugs when Sam gives him a sideways glance.  He’s not saying a goddamn word until he has to.

They’re guided down the long corridor, passing by a series of secluded rooms hidden by long blue curtains and sliding doors. It’s the regular part of the hospital Dean’s most familiar with, not the rooms where people go for appointments, where Sam spent most of his time. They’re back in the outpatient center, he thinks, wherever people go after they’ve gone through something major like surgery.

Dean can’t think of anything that’s happened back here that was _good_ , not one that would be a favorite memory worthy of Heaven. It’s starting to really freak him out.

“Here we are,” the nurse chirps, pushing back the sliding door for room 104. She doesn’t guide them inside or say anything else, she just flashes another pearly smile in Dean’s direction and patters off back down the hall.

Sam says nothing, just keeps looking at Dean like he’s expecting an answer or an explanation. Maybe he his, and maybe Dean should give him one, but he’s as scared as his little brother to find out what’s behind the curtain. Quite frankly, he’d much rather take off in search of the road and get on their merry way, but curiosity is one hell of a bitch and Sam’s already got one of his giant paws on the curtain, pushing it aside.

Oh. OH.

Jessica is lying in the hospital bed, her legs covered in several layers of white, heated blankets. She’s smiling so wide and brightly despite the tiredness in her eyes and the smattering of broken blood vessels around her cheeks. The little red spots dot her pale face and neck, the pools of purple beneath her eyes are dark and deep and her curly blonde hair is sweaty and pulled back into a bun. She’s exhausted but oh so beautiful, glowing and beaming with pride. Her belly is smaller but still round and poking out beneath the blankets, and bouquets of orchids and lilies adorn every surface in her room.

The white board on the opposite wall is filled out in green marker, announcing the birth of a lovely baby girl named Leah Adrianne Winchester.

“Jess,” Sam breathes, rushing to her side in only three massive strides, trying to take her hand in his own but failing. He’s searching her face, cupping her flushed, strained cheeks and making an awful whimpering sound that sinks Dean’s heart. Jessica is oblivious to Sam’s presence, her eyes trained on Dean and his careful steps forward. Sam looks so lost, so pained, confused and bewildered by the memory playing out before them. “I don’t remember this,” Sam mutters, glancing back at Dean, “I don’t – when did – God, Dean, what’s going on?”

Dean slows his pace, stopping a couple feet short of Jessica’s bedside with a sigh waiting on his lips. He can’t believe _this_ is the memory that Sam has to see first, the one guaranteed to bring his brother more pain and sorrow than brotherly concern and curiosity. The clarity in his mind seems to backfire, because now all Dean can see are the months after Jessica’s death and the way his little brother had been so internally wrecked. He sees his fictional brother too, a sobbing mess crumpled against Dean’s chest when he had to mark his own child’s time of death. He wishes a migraine would cloud and thunder in his skull, wishes for the agonizing escape of that particular pain so he doesn’t have to deal with this.

“It’s not your memory, Sammy,” Dean finally says, resting a hand on his brother’s shoulder in a pitiful attempt to soothe him. It’s a useless gesture but one he does all the same, unsure of what else to do with himself when the migraine doesn’t come.

He watches as Sam’s face contorts in a myriad of conflicting emotions, and he can see the disbelief warring with his features as he struggles to comprehend what he’s seeing. They both know the only time Dean ever saw Jessica was that very short greeting at Stanford, when he made some kind of smart ass comment about her shirt before convincing Sam to go on a hunt. Dean had never seen her in a hospital, never had the chance to build memories with her before she paid the ultimate price for loving a Winchester - just like their mother had.

“Of course it is,” Sam argues, his short temper flaring at Jessica’s continued disregard for his presence. She’s smiling at Dean though, so happy to see him that she opens her arms in a welcoming gesture, expecting Dean to hug her back. He did hug her the first time, gave her a tight but gentle squeeze and kissed her temple before congratulating her on a job well done.

He doesn’t do that now, of course, not with his little brother glaring at him so intensely that he worries Sam might actually attack him.

Then Sam’s face pales, his eyes widening in horror as he stands up straight and drops Jessica’s hand. Dean turns to face whatever terrifying monster has ambushed them, instinct snapping through him like taut elastic as he reaches for a weapon, but freezes in place when his eyes find the source of shock.

It’s his brother, the fictional one, walking into the room with baby Leah cradled in his arms.

Seeing them both in the same room should be enough to make Dean vomit, should be splitting his head in two and sending him barreling towards utter madness, but the mental respite provided on this holy path to paradise keeps him painfully aware and conscious. The doctor’s hair is shorter, he’s filled out more and better fed with tanned skin and ignorant bliss in his eyes. His real brother just stands there, stunned beyond words, as the doctor version of Sam sets a sleeping, swaddled baby in Dean’s arms.

“You’re an uncle,” the doctor says, a low chuckle in his throat, then, “I’m a father.”

“She’s gorgeous,” Dean replies, unable to stop himself. He had such little time with his niece that ignoring this opportunity would be foolish, even if none of it was real. Sam’s going to find out anyway, assuming he hasn’t already, and it’s like he’s always heard: in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Dean,” Sam growls behind him, more fear than fury in the rumble, “what the fuck is this?”

He wants to reply, he really does, but the memory of what comes next keeps Dean’s lips sealed and his feet nailed to the floor. His brother will know soon enough, he’ll explain everything when this is over and he’ll apologize profusely, but right now his other brother needs him; fictional or not, past or not, this moment is too huge to cast aside.

Dean looks up and meets the doctor’s eyes, sees the worry and the panic there, and asks, “you okay?”

His doctor brother darts a glance at Jess and gives her a hesitant smile, then clutches Dean’s elbow and guides him slowly outside. Sam is huffing behind them, still pissed about the whole thing and probably losing his mind trying to figure it all out, but Dean ignores him for now. Leah is sleeping soundly, bundled in her pink blanket, her little lips dreamily sucking on her tongue.

God, he doesn’t know if he can go through this twice.

The door is shut behind them, leaving Jessica alone in the room and out of the conversation. Sam folds his arms across his chest and grunts, standing next to Dean with that bitch face but keeping his eyes on the Bizzaro version of himself.

“Dean,” the doctor brother starts, tears welling up in his eyes, “Leah has Turner Syndrome. We, uh…we knew early on, but didn’t want to say anything. We weren’t sure if she was even going to make it. But look at her – she’s doing so well, her heart sounds strong, so I think it’s safe to say she’s going to live a long, happy life.”

Dean nods, biting his tongue. He looks down at the little bald baby, so adorably perfect in every way, a carbon copy of her momma. He could tell this Sam the truth, could tell him that Leah isn’t going to survive the week, but these memories are just reruns of the original and he wouldn’t hear it anyway. Dean chooses to say nothing; he doesn’t want to tear his eyes away from the little girl that made him want to be a dad in the first place, can’t bear the thought that they’re all going to lose her again when the dream ends.

He kisses her, just like he kissed Jem: so soft and light, like the press of butterfly wings against each of her eyelids, wishing her peace and safety in whatever afterlife exists for the people who only existed in his head.

The colors around them start to face, graying out and darkening around the edges. Leah feels lighter in his arms, his fictional brother fades out and the room around them goes dark.

Then they’re gone.

“Was that – Christ, don’t tell me that’s what you –” Sam’s words are cut off when spotlights shine down on them, a menacing voice laughing at them for trying to run and hide from the angels on their own turf. They run – of course they do, they’re not possums, not going to roll over and play dead – but Dean knows the futility of running anyway.

He’s pretty sure they’re doomed until a slender luchador with a cape appears out of nowhere and sweeps them away behind an old wooden door with sloppy sigils drawn in chalk.

҉     ҉     ҉

Mary calls him a burden, says she never loved him.

They’re back in their old house, the only home Dean ever knew in his real life. The once-comforting walls that made him feel safe and loved are now constricting and barred, a prison with brick walls where doors and windows used to be.

Blood blooms on his mother’s nightgown, bright spots of crimson that mock the memory of his mother’s death. Sam says nothing, can’t even if he wanted to – he was just a baby, doesn’t remember what happened, wasn’t there. Dean remembers all of it, the rancid smell of bubbling flesh and burnt hair, the golden flames that licked across the walls and the sound of his father’s voice urging him to run and keep Sammy safe.

That same gold is reflected in Mary’s eyes now, swirling clouds like a noxious gas where irises should be.

This can’t be Heaven. He refuses to believe that Hell would be preferable the beautiful afterlife Pam described in Ash’s Heaven, doesn’t understand why the world insists on torturing him even in death.

She had called him her little angel, but now he’s unwanted; a heavy weight lifted from her shoulders.

“Everybody leaves you, Dean,” she sings, her voice deceptively light and gentle, “Mommy, Daddy, Sam, _Cas_ \- maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s _you_.”

It’s laughable to think that Dean ever claimed to be in pain before. Laughable to think that Hell was the worst thing he’d ever have to endure. Reliving the parade of memories was enough, losing his husband and children for a second time was torture, Sam seeing it first hand as his secret was revealed against his will was the cherry on top of it all – but this? His own mother confirming the worst fears he’d harbored for so long in the real world? Dean would rather spend another hundred years in Hell then another five seconds trapped in this room.

It’s a small mercy when Joshua shows up and takes them to Garden.

҉     ҉     ҉

God doesn’t care, isn’t planning on intervening or doing any more than he already has. For some reason, Dean isn’t all that surprised.

At this point, he’s resigned to the same level of apathy for himself and humanity. Dean is just one man, after all, nothing special or supernatural about him except for the needling fact that he’s the right fitting glove for Michael’s hand. He’s lived enough for three lives, seen more death and blood than anyone else he’s ever known, has saved hundreds of lives despite losing the people he loves most in this world. The only piece of happiness Dean ever got to experience turned out to be a cruel joke, was stripped away from him in a blinding blue flash with nothing left but the cruel reminders of their loss.

He’s so tired of fighting. So tired of resisting the fate designed for him when there’s nothing left to resist for.

Dean would kill himself if he didn’t know how miserable the afterlife will be. He’d drive his Baby off a cliff, would stuff the barrel of his gun in his mouth - anything to free himself from all the bullshit and the upcoming apocalypse. There’s nothing he can do to stop it, not without letting Michael wear him and leaving him a drooling mess at the end of it.

All things considered, it’s probably worth it. Probably the right choice.

He calls Cas to tell him the news. The angel pops in with excitement and unbridled eagerness, looking at Dean with that goddamn twinkle in his eyes and love on his lips. Fuck, it’s confusing and twisting him up; Cas has been warming up and leaving heated touches on Dean’s skin, has been nicer and happier in Dean’s presence than he ever was before. As Cas awaits whatever news Dean has for him, he stares at Dean with such fondness, with those beautiful crinkles around his eyes that Dean remembers so well from the other life.

But when Cas hears what Dean has to say, when he hears that God has washed his hands of the world and is walking around on Earth like none of it matters, the light in Cas’ eyes flickers out. His face and body go rigid, cold and closed off, and whatever beam of hope and love that Dean read in the angel’s features are gone.

“I don’t need this anymore,” Cas says, tossing the amulet back to Dean. But the look on the angel’s face and the submission in his voice speaks louder than the uttered words. Dean knows what Cas really means. _I don’t need_ you _anymore_. “It’s worthless.” _You’re worthless._

Sam just keeps staring at them both, eyes flitting back and forth between them as if he’s seeing something Dean isn’t. Maybe Dean’s just not hiding the desperateness radiating from his skin as well as he thought he was.

Cas is gone, and once again it’s just him and Sam and a nameless motel room.

Sam doesn’t say anything about Dean’s memory, the one he knows must have been from the Djinn dream. His attention is focused on the door now, on the empty space where Cas used to be, determination flooding his system as he insists that they’ll find a way, find an answer.

Dean doesn’t have a response to that, not anymore.

He hopes that dropping the amulet in the trash is answer enough.

҉     ҉     ҉

Cas is drunk, and the daughter of the pastor who saved their hides is a whore.

It’s been over a week since Dean last saw the angel, over a week of thinking and mulling and drinking himself stupid. The migraines came back full force, leaving him crippled and useless and unable to contribute much to Sam’s unrelenting cause. It’s what got them cornered in the first place, his confusion and headaches and mixing Sam up with the doctor all over again. They were lucky to be saved at all, and though Dean’s grateful he doesn’t have to go back to Heaven, the urge to die hasn’t left the pen of his heart.

Seeing Cas as hammered as he is opens old wounds. They weren’t drinkers in that other life, but there were times when Dean’s lightweight husband celebrated a little too hard and had to be taken care of. The last time that Cas had been drunk, they were in the back of a truck on their anniversary after fucking each other raw and boneless.

It doesn’t help that Cas keeps looking at him. They’re trying to have a serious conversation, trying to resolve yet another problem that can apparently only be solved by them, but Cas can’t seem to focus on the topic any better than Dean can. Even Sam starts to notice, especially when Cas starts eye-fucking Dean from across the room.

Sam hasn’t brought up their time in Heaven yet, but Dean’s pretty sure that his brother has a good idea of what happened in the dream during those few days Dean was strung up and at the mercy of a glowing blue monster. Sam saw Dean’s search history, saw Leah’s birth, but the one thing Sam hasn’t caught onto yet is the fact that Dean was married to a human Cas. Dean suspects that last lingering secret is going to be exposed, and soon. Cas won’t stop staring at Dean like he’s dancing naked on a pole, and Dean is having trouble separating his husband from the angel in his aching, throbbing mind.

Later, when Cas is sobering up and sitting outside on a bench, holding his head in his hands as he forges through the massive hangover, Dean tosses him a bottle of Tylenol.

“I’ve been there,” Dean says, empathizing with both the mental and physical pain Cas must be suffering from, “I’m a big expert on deadbeat dads – so, yeah, I get. I know how you feel.”

There’s a moment of silence in the dark; Cas analyzes the bottle of pills in his hands, thumbing at the frayed label before looking up and locking eyes with Dean. They stare at each other, and normally Dean would shy away from that kind of focused intensity, but his brain is so goddamned jumbled that a part of him recognizes the gaze as normal; a loving bond between husbands, nothing strange about it, just two guys who love each other more than anything else in the world.

Cas rises from the bench and takes a few wobbly steps in Dean’s direction. His eyes never leave Dean’s, he doesn’t look away for a single moment, not even to help steady himself. Then Cas is right up in Dean’s face; they’re breathing the same air, a mere two inches apart, and Dean is so fucking confused that he’s frozen in place. Which Cas is he looking at? Is this the one he loves, or the one who doesn’t care if Dean exists at all?

“How do you manage it?” Cas whispers, still crowding Dean up against the Impala. Dean sucks in a sharp breath, licks his lips – he senses that there's more to this question than what’s been said, that Cas is asking about more than just absent fathers and nauseating hangovers.

Before Dean can answer, Cas closes the tiny space between them and presses their lips together. The bottle of pills drops to the ground as Cas lifts his hands to Dean’s chest, the warmth of his palms radiating through the fabric of Dean’s shirt.

Half of Dean is screaming in protest; warning bells and sirens of alarm blare in his skull and he has to resist the urge to shove Cas away with all the force he can muster. The other half of him – the stronger, more desperate side of his brain – rejoices at the contact and floods him with contentment. He stops trying to figure out which Cas he’s kissing, doesn’t care, he just wants to hold his husband and take whatever Cas is willing to give.

Dean’s heart is a hummingbird flapping wildly in the cage of his ribs. His lips buzz from the heat and pressure of Cas’ mouth on his, and he whimpers into the kiss like a wounded animal offered shelter from a storm. Cas parts his lips and Dean follows, letting the angel ( _his husband, his lover, the father his children_ ) map out his mouth with an expert tongue. Dean can taste the potent combination of whiskey and wine, can feel the blunt edge of Cas’ teeth as he nips at Dean’s lips like they’ve done this hundreds of times before.

Christ, maybe they have. Dean is turned around and upside down, and for a moment he has no idea who he is or what the fuck he’s doing here.

Cas stops abruptly, pulling away from the kiss despite Dean’s attempt to chase it, taking a step backward and clearing himself of any emotion that had been there only seconds before. “I apologize,” he says, straight faced and stoic, “that was inappropriate.”

Well, at least that answers the question bouncing around in Dean’s mind. This is the Cas that doesn’t love him, didn’t share a beautiful life with him and is just as screwed and hopeless as the rest of them.

He seriously can’t take this shit anymore. He can’t do this, he _won’t_.

Dean will be catatonic and crapping himself in a hospital bed, but at least he won’t be conscious or dead in either Heaven or Hell. At least he won’t have live in constant confusion, won’t have to miss his children or the town he raised them in. Best of all, Dean won’t be kissed by a drunk angel, a soulless version of the man he would have given his life for in a heartbeat.

Dean’s going to say yes to Michael.


	6. Days Go By

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Days Go By - Dirty Vegas
> 
> So, there will be a 7th chapter :) Enjoy.

It’s not exactly how Dean remembers it, but it’s close enough.

There’s a Nebraska sunrise on the horizon; it’s nearly colorless, bathing the fields of stalk-green and wheat-gold in a white, muted light. Dean loves that about the Midwest, loves that the rising and setting of the sun happens along the smooth curve of the earth. Most places see the shining rays through thick lines of trees or over distant mountains, framed by a Tetris landscape of skyscrapers or sharp city lines. Not here, not in this sacred place cradled by low rolling hills and a slow, bubbling river. In Big Springs, you get a glimpse of how the world ought to be without all the extra clatter.

That’s what Dean wants most for his Final Goodbye: pale daybreak and miles of farmland separating him from reality.

He kind of laughs at that – the pursuit of escaping reality. The trite cliché that plagues the ignorant working-class American. Work all week to have the weekend. Work all year to have the holidays. Yearning for the beach from a windowless workplace.

Dean wishes he suffered from long days at the office and once-yearly vacations, that he had intolerable co-workers and overbearing bosses instead of the perpetual parade of bullshit he’s enduring now. He remembers the mild annoyance at traffic when it made him late for dinner, how tedious it was to load the dishwasher and fold a basket of laundry. How mundane that life had been.

How satisfying.

But that life is gone. It exists only in the tangled synapses of his mind - when he reaches for the phone to call his children, when he wakes in the morning and expects someone to be beside him, when drunken angels kiss him and press their warm hands against his chest – but those interwoven fibers are frayed at best. They’re unraveling, _Dean’_ s unraveling, and Michael’s the only one waiting for him at the end of the rope.

That is what Dean’s entire life has been leading up to; the illusion of free will and Pinocchio-like mantras ( _I’m a real boy, I’m a real boy_ ) were distraction enough to keep him from noticing the strings pinned to his arms and legs. He was never more than a puppet to be played with, a sword to be unsheathed. Even now that Dean has come to terms with it, that he’s accepted his fate and allowed destiny to be more than just a fairytale notion, he can’t settle the squirming pile of dirt-caked worms in his stomach.

He just wants to see it one last time. Wants to know if the house is real. Maybe he can barter a deal with the archangel, make sure the little town he loves is safe along with his kid brother and Cas. Maybe when it’s all said and done, they can live happily ever after in the little yellow house and forget about what’s left of humanity.

Dean’s sure pigs will be flying in that fantasy as well, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing really matters anymore; as soon as Michael slips under his skin, Dean will forget it all anyway and then he’ll be dead. It’s kind of the whole point to saying yes.

Big Springs is still asleep. The underpopulated village has yet to rise with the waking sun, the roads are free of people and cars, and there’s nothing but a mild wind that smells faintly of soil and pollen when he rolls his window down. Dean slows the car to a crawl and takes in each building he passes, comparing what he sees to the memories still fresh in his mind. So much is the same, it’s almost identical to the world constructed by the Djinn. He wonders if the monster had lived here before, had fed off the townsfolk while living in some abandoned Quonset hut down the river. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.

Dean takes his time. He took off from the motel sometime yesterday and left Sam without a ride, couldn’t leave without the etchings on his ribs so Cas can’t find him either. This may well be the only time in Dean’s life that he’ll ever actually be free, so he’s going to savor the experience and let the moment absorb him into it. He strolls by the library first, built from ruddy brick with a bright red roof and square windows. It was Cas and Jem’s favorite way to pass the time, the place they always went to on their little day-dates when their son was just old enough to walk.

Every place here has a memory like that. The post office, the school on top of the tiny hill, even the patch of green grass dotted with trees and picnic tables they called a park. Dean was right to come here. He needed to see this place again, needed to see it for how it exists in reality with sober, kindled eyes. It fills him with a sense of validation, reminds him that all the unbearable pain he’s felt since the dream is completely justified. Saying yes to Michael is the right thing, he thinks, because Big Springs is real and the forty extra years crammed in his head will never go away. The world is ending and the least Dean can do is succumb to it.

He picks up speed over the railroad crossing and drives past the river until he sees the dirt road that should take him _home_.

There was never any guarantee that this place would be the same as his dream, he had no reason to believe that the road would even be there, but here it is in front of him and it looks exactly the way he remembers it. Soft, sand-like dirt layered over a trail of uneven rocks and gravel. Burgeoning shrubs and trees rustling at the entrance like they’re shivering from the cold. And, if Dean’s lucky enough, a beautiful American Foursquare somewhere at the end of it.

With nothing to lose, Dean crosses his fingers and hits the gas.

As he drives down the bumpy dirt road, he thinks about the kiss that brought him here; if anyone is to blame for Dean’s weakness, it’s Cas, isn’t it? The angel’s lips are the catalyst for this impromptu trip down memory lane before he willfully turns himself over to the apocalypse. Dean had been desperately hanging on by his fingertips, white-knuckling through each day for the sake of his brother and the ungrateful world, and then Cas had to come along and strip it all away. Dean was already spiraling, but the human brain is only meant to hold so much and he was giving it his best shot. He was _trying_ , dammit.

It’s like he’s right back to that first week after waking up. Dean had been so confused and bogged down that he couldn’t tell the difference between the dream and reality. He still has problems with it, but that first week was the worst. He couldn’t tell if Sam was behaving normally, couldn’t tell which brother he was looking at half the time. Is that what’s happening now? Cas has been acting so strange, so angry, staring at Dean with such intensity that he could feel it in his bones. Then that kiss: gentle, slow, sweet like the wine he could taste on Cas’ lips, the swipe of the angel’s tongue over his a soothing balm for his ugly insides. It was just like before, in the dream. Just like he remembered.

As if the lines weren’t blurred enough, weren’t already ripping him apart.

The bastard won’t even take the damn memories away, just leaves them in Dean’s head like his skull is meant for trash, like the angel can’t be bothered to clean up the mess. Even that would be fine if Cas just let it be, but he’s been stoking the fire with those stares and lingering touches as if he’s actively trying to make it _worse_.

Cas had been drunk. His father abandoned him and the rest of humanity. The apocalypse is upon them. From that perspective, being pushed against the Impala and kissed doesn’t seem so strange, so random. If Dean were in the right frame of mind, he’d be doing the same to every sweet, willing smile within a mile radius. It isn’t much different than what Dean had been doing in those precious few months before Hell, so maybe he can’t blame Cas too much after all. Poor guy was just doing what everyone else does in the face of impending disaster, and Dean just happened to be caught in the crosshairs. Not the angel’s fault that Dean is coincidentally in love with him.

His thoughts are interrupted as the greenery clears and reveals exactly what he hoped to see.

The house. _His_ house. Faded buttercup yellow with white lattice trim, cracked concrete steps leading up to the front door, even the deteriorated garage is still sitting there to the left. With the window down, Dean can smell the familiar scent of sunflowers and firewood, can hear the crickets and the bees as they dart away from the engine’s formidable rumble.

Christ, it’s here.

Despite how much is the same, there are obvious differences that catch Dean’s eye as he parks the car in front of the garage. The home has been poorly maintained, abandoned most likely, left to rot with the elements like an afterthought. The paint is chipped and peeling off in overheated curls, the windows are fractured and splattered with bits of mud and cobwebs, and the steps have been overrun with weeds.

Gabby used to sit on those steps and ponder life, a spoon of peanut butter in hand as she stared at the broken fence, no doubt wondering what the future had in store for her. Dean had wondered that too, couldn’t wait to see what kind of people his children would grow up to be, but he knows the error of that impatience now. He should have sat beside her more often, should have asked her what thoughts were storm-clouding behind those spirited, chocolate brown eyes.

Dean pushes those thoughts far away, and fast. He doesn’t want to be sad right now, can’t waste another minute of his pathetic tour sulking in sorrow. This is supposed to make him happy, this is meant to cheer him up and remind him of the one good thing he had before he says yes.

The inside is a different story, and it catches him off-guard. It’s nothing like his memories, not even close. The whole of it looks untouched by time: wood-paneled walls, doilies everywhere, rocking chairs in more places than there ought to be. A fine layer of dust has settled on every surface minus the cleared trail left behind by sugar ants. No one has lived here for quite some time, that much is obvious.  Dean is so preoccupied by at all that he doesn’t notice the footprints of dirt on the shag carpet before it’s too late.

Sam is standing in what used to be Dean’s living room. It looks more like a formal sitting room now - floral couches and crocheted afghans all over the place – but he can still picture where his stuff used to be, can still see where he and his family used to eat popcorn and watch movies. Sam looks pissed, maybe rightfully so, but Dean’s too close to losing it to apologize. It’s hard enough seeing his brother in his house, seeing _this_ brother here with his arms crossed and eyes crestfallen.

There’s a moment of tense silence before Dean breaks it. “How’d you find me?”

“You’re going to kill yourself, right?” Sam sighs, more of a statement than a question. “Not too hard to figure out the stops on the farewell tour.”

Of all the emotions broiling beneath Dean’s skin, shame and crippling embarrassment are the ones to rise to the top first. It’s one thing to reach this point on his own, to throw in the towel while no one’s looking, but it’s something entirely other to have your kid brother watch you take the final step off the cliff.

“I’m not gonna kill myself,” Dean breathes, and it makes him feel like he’s pouting, like he’s a wayward sheep being corralled back home. He’s almost indignant enough to say he can kill himself if he wants to, he’s done enough for everyone else, but that’s not what this is about.

It’s not, right? This isn’t about suicide. It’s about saving the world and sending Lucifer back to the pit, and if Dean gets a little perk on the side then that’s his business. He’d like to see Sam try and handle all the shit in Dean’s head, all the pain and migraines and confusion. His little brother has running down to a science, so he can take his double standards and his soapbox somewhere else.

Sam shakes his head, bites on his lip. “So, Michael’s _not_ about to make you his Muppet?”

Dean wants to snap something back, wants to pick his brother apart piece by piece for daring to show up here and ruin what little happiness he came here to find. Today was supposed to be about Dean and this house, about this town and the memories he can’t escape no matter how hard he tries.

It strikes him as odd for a moment that Sam knew how to get to this place, actually, especially considering Dean’s pretty sure he didn’t tell him about it. He sorts through his jumbled up mind, wondering when Sam would have seen or heard about this house, wondering how Sam managed to get here before Dean did.

All Sam had was a Google search for Big Springs and a clipped view of Jessica in a hospital room.

“How did you know about this place?” Dean asks, ignoring Sam’s question. It’s eating at him now, freaking him out that Sam is here at all and somehow new _exactly_ which house Dean would be going to.

Sam shifts his weight, keeping his eyes locked on Dean. “Cas told me everything.”

He says it like those four little words are supposed to mean something, like Dean will just automatically understand and say _oh, gotcha, okay_. He says it like Dean and Cas shared some illicit secret and now the whole world knows, like he’s expecting Dean to drop the dumbfounded act and get with the program.

Last Dean checked, Cas knew even less than Sam did. “Told you what?”

The exasperated sigh huffing from between his brother’s lips is normally a lot funnier than it is right now. “About _this_ , Dean. He told me about the Djinn dream, about your life together with him. The kids, the house, all of it.”

“No,” Dean starts, refusing to believe that lurid lie for even a single minute. His heart pulses with a sudden terror, a panic that prickles his skin and makes his fingertips numb. Cas didn’t know, did he? How could he? Dean never told the angel those things, never mentioned them out loud when anyone else was around. Surely Sam had seen more than Cas ever did when they were in Heaven, darting through their greatest hits like some kind of twisted scavenger hunt, “He didn’t know.”

Except that he must have known, otherwise Sam wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be saying things that should have only been Dean’s business.

“He said it happened when he healed you, when I found you in that building in Malta. I guess he saw everything when he touched you and zapped you back into health,” Sam explains, shrugging his shoulders. “I mean, it all kinda makes sense now, at least. You’ve been so…I don’t know, _different_.”

Dean wants to laugh at that; he would, too, if he weren’t so fucked up right now. “Yeah, spending forty years in another life will do that to you.”

Sam must take the shift in conversation as permission to get closer. He steps forward, honing in on Dean with those fox-like eyes of his, trapping him against a particularly dusty corner. “If that’s why – if those memories are too much, and this is all just to get away from that crap, you don’t have to say yes, Dean. That’s not the answer, okay? It doesn’t have to be this way.”

There are many things Dean could say to that, namely that it’s none of his brother’s business and he can take his mawkish petitioning elsewhere, but then Dean’s thought process slams face first into a brick wall when he realizes something that’s about to make him sick.

Cas has known all of it from the very beginning, which means Cas knew what Dean was going through when he kissed him.

Yeah, he’s definitely going to vomit.

Whatever strength was keeping Dean upright fades away in a matter of seconds. He crumples to the floor with his back braced against the wall, letting his legs give out and fold beneath him. Christ, he has no idea what he’s feeling right now, no idea what he’s going to do about it. Cas knew how deeply Dean was suffering, knew that he must have been in so much agony just _looking_ at the angel, and yet Cas never helped him, never followed through on his promise to wipe the slate clean. That feathery asshole had been acting like he cared the entire goddamn time and then had the balls to shove his tongue into Dean’s mouth exactly like the dream Cas had.

Must have been so fucking hilarious, making fun of Dean that way. What a laugh Cas must have had when Dean tried to chase the kiss, tried to hold onto the moment just a little longer. And what good is a joke unless shared with friends? Of course the angel would tell Sammy all about it. Probably chuckled and elbowed each other’s ribs for a good hour after Dean left.

Ha ha, poor Dean, in love with Cas. How pathetic.

“Just, please, not now. Bobby’s working on something,” Sam offers, filling the silence when Dean continues to say nothing.

Fury is what he feels, Dean decides. Fury and wrathful devastation.

It’s with venom in his voice that he asks, “Oh really? What?”

He knows there’s nothing. They’ve searched endlessly for clues and trails, bit every baited line tossed their way only to be thrown right back into the water. Bobby is a man of many talents, but not even he can stop the apocalypse from happening; not now, not this late in the game. Dean’s hunting skills have refined a set of intangible tools that have come in handy over the years, from the prickling sensation when he’s being watched to seeing signs civilians would normally miss. A heavy sense of dread, one that feels like a sac of spider eggs has hatched in his chest, is one such tool that tells him this is the end. There’s no point in fighting. They’re not going to win.

He can’t blame Sam for not seeing it, for not sensing it the same way Dean can. Dumb kid spent years away at Stanford, then messed his head up with all that demon blood. “You got nothin’ and you know it.”

Sam takes a deep breath, looking around the room as if he’s trying to see the life that Dean lived here. His face falls again, devolving into that helpless puppy dog face that usually works on people when they need it to, but it’s never worked on Dean and it’s not about to work now. “I’m sorry,” Sam finally says, closing his eyes, “I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you. I get it now, what you meant about your son. Cas said it was a beautiful life.”

Dean wipes a shaking hand over his face, attempting to hide the tears budding in the corners of his eyes. He doesn’t want to hear about his children, doesn’t want to hear that Cas called their life _beautiful_. He’s still fuming with all the anger that has no place else to go, wants to hurt someone bad like he did all those years in Hell. Wants to cut someone open and make them bleed. He doesn’t understand why Cas would go through the trouble of describing Dean’s dream; it’s not like Cas is a very descriptive person and rare is the adjective that comes from the angel’s mouth. _Beautiful_ hardly does it justice, anyway.

He can tell what Sam is trying to do, though: soften Dean up until he’s pliable putty and stick him somewhere small and dark so he can’t cause any more trouble.

Maybe it worked a little.

“Don’t,” Dean pleads, ignoring the wobble in his own voice, “just don’t.”

“You know I have to stop you,” his brother whispers, as if that will pardon the fact that he used Dean’s son as ammunition.

“Yeah, well, you can try,” he says, deflated as he feels, “just remember, you’re not all hopped up on demon blood this time.”

It’s an empty bluff, one he hopes his brother doesn’t see. Dean’s in no position to be fighting, not with another migraine coming on, and definitely not inside this sacred place he refuses to see broken. It might not look the same as his dream, there might be different pieces of furniture and old sun-bleached curtains over the windows, but he still wants Michael to keep this place safe and protected for After. Assuming there will even be an After for Dean when all is said and done.

“Yeah, I know…but I brought help.”

There’s a flimsy gust of wind, a familiar rustling of fabric and then Cas is there, standing over Dean with a nasty snarl on his face. Cas is pissed, absolutely _livid_ , but Dean barely has enough time to blink before his forehead is tapped and all goes black.

҉     ҉     ҉

Back at Bobby’s, Dean does what he can to be as annoyingly unhelpful as possible.

It’s not that he’s trying to delay their progress, he just knows that there’s no progress to be made. Both Sam and Bobby are flipping through pages of worn, ancient texts, darting impatient glances at Dean as he walks back and forth across the study. He’s doing his absolute best to point out the error of their hope, to squash the fingers still clinging to the edge of the cliff. Every minute Dean is still here is a minute that could be spent slaying Lucifer, a minute that could be spent blissfully ignorant and painless.

Cas’ eyes haven’t left Dean once. It’s so unsettling that he wonders if angels have to blink - they don’t have to eat or sleep, don’t have to respect personal boundaries – so it seems like a logical extension of Cas’ abilities that he can stare at Dean without pause.

He’s inclined to stare back to make a point, to call him out on it in front of the others to get him to stop, but the rage emanating from every pore on Cas’ body is kind of freaking him out. Dean’s no coward, but he can feel the stare penetrating his bones and it’s a little like being under a high powered microscope.

Not to mention Cas knows _everything_. Christ.

When Bobby’s had enough of Dean’s shit, he looks up and asks, “What the hell happened to you?”

_Gee, Bobby,_ he thinks, _I lived an entire life in my head. I had a home and a family. I raised two kids into adulthood and had a brother I could trust. I fell asleep beside my husband and woke up in an abandoned building with both sets of memories, fuck you very much._

“Reality happened,” Dean settles on.

It’s the most honest thing he’s said in a while.

҉     ҉     ҉

The door to the panic room swings open with a creepy groan, revealing Sam and Cas on the other side.

He hates that he’s being involuntarily benched like he’s on suicide watch. That’s pretty much what’s happening here; they’re locking Dean up to keep him from running off to Michael to spare Adam from the same fate. He’d be lying if he said it didn’t piss him off, but he gets it. Dean’s done the same thing to his brother more than once, left him to rot alone in this empty space until the demon blood ran its course. Can’t blame him for returning the favor.

Sam steps through the doorway, approaching Dean with a slight hesitation. Cas stays outside and continues to stare, looking more like a bitter, scorned lover than a pissed off comrade. Dean still can’t quite figure out why Cas is so angry in the first place – sure, he took off with the intention of saying yes to Michael, but no one else is ready to put Dean’s neck under the guillotine just yet.

Humor is the first line of Dean’s defenses, and it might give him away more than he wants to be exposed, but knowing Cas saw the entire Djinn dream puts Dean in an awkward position. For all he knows, Cas could have been mocking him the entire time, could be mocking him now.

“Well Cas, not for nothin’, but the last time you looked at me like that, I got laid.”

Heh. Two can play at that game.

Sam shifts awkwardly beside him, swallowing back an unpleasant lump in his throat before turning toward a stone-still Cas, “Uh, why don’t you, uh – why don’t you go keep an eye on Adam?” He suggests, barely getting the words out. Seems Sam has been effected by the Djinn dream too, embarrassed and stuttering around the two guys he knows hooked up in Dean’s head.

Cas doesn’t stop staring, so Dean winks. Game, set, match.

When the door is finally closed and Cas is gone, Dean is still itching for a fight. Sam is eyeing Dean with his permanent sad-face, clearly waiting for Dean to speak first, so he does. “Is all this really necessary?”

He knows it is, but it doesn’t stop the question from coming out of his mouth. If he weren’t stuck in the panic room, Dean would be doing all he could to slip away unnoticed so Adam doesn’t have to be the one to take the bullet. More than that, Dean is resolute now, ready to answer the final summons of this pitiful life. He meant what he said outside of that bar, meant it wholeheartedly and still means it now; Dean’s lived a really long time, lived three separate lives lasting over one hundred years and he’s ready to throw in the towel. Sam should know this by now, should have a little sympathy for his tormented older brother, but he’s leaving the baton in Dean’s hands and making him run all the way to finish line like an asshole.

“Well, we got our hands full, Dean. A house full of flight risks.”

Their conversation goes about as well as one would suspect. They’re bickering mostly, picking at each other like they had done upstairs with Bobby. Sam is insistent, bull-headed and full of fire like their dad, pleading with Dean to reconsider his decision to turn himself into a puppet.

They talk about Adam, too. God, Dean doesn’t know whether he’s jealous or just full of piss and vinegar about the fact that the angels brought him up in Dean’s place. That was his out, his grand excuse for letting go of the world and those fucking dicks had to go and resurrect a Plan B. Hearing Adam talk about his Heaven was a challenge enough; of course the kid got to enjoy the afterlife, and Dean’s willing to bet Kate didn’t show up at her son’s prom covered in blood and calling him unwanted and unloved.  

He doesn’t like Adam, maybe even hates him a little bit right now, but Dean’s still not going to let him take his place.

“Think about how many people we’ve gotten killed, Sam,” Dean says, and it hurts him to say it. He doesn’t want to think about the blood on his hands or all the blood yet to be spilt. “Mom, Dad, Jess, Jo, Ellen…” he pauses to let the names sink in, waits for Sam to understand what he’s saying, “should I keep going?”

“It’s not like we pulled the trigger.”

“We might as well have,” Dean pushes, starting to feel desperate. He thinks about all the people who have died, their family and friends, people who trusted them and ended up six feet under for their efforts. He thinks about that life in Nebraska, about Jem and Gabby, about the man he loved that no longer exists. The real Cas hates him now, only kissed him out of pity or humor, the final nail in the coffin holding that entire world he still frantically clings to. “I’m tired, man. I’m tired of fighting who I’m supposed to be.”

Sam nods, taking half a step back, and for a moment Dean thinks his brother is finally getting it. Maybe his brother is finally seeing Dean for who he really is, who he’s become since waking from the Djinn dream, and has enough mercy to just let him go and do what he needs to do.

But then Sam takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders, and Dean knows what that means. Sam’s not stepping down from his soap box just yet. “Tell me about it, Dean. About that other life.”

He freezes. “No.”

“Yes,” Sam counters, dropping the wounded look from his face and replacing it with something more determined, more deadly. “That’s what all this is really about, right? We were on the same team until that Djinn whammied you into another world, and I want to know what changed. I want to know why you’re giving up.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” is all Dean can think to say. He’s still not ready for this conversation, especially not now that Cas knows and apparently told Sam enough about it already. It’s turning out to be the world’s longest joke and Dean’s really tired of being the punchline.

Sam huffs, sitting down on the cot in the center of the room. “Remember that mystery spot, Dean?”

Like he could really forget. That whole year before Hell was a crazy one; Sam was growing increasingly desperate, steadily losing his mind and the grip he had over his own self-control. Whatever happened at that mystery spot, though, changed Sam in ways that Dean still struggles to comprehend. He gets where Sam is going with this now, but it doesn’t make him any more cooperative. He grunts in response, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I watched you die over a hundred times, day after day. I thought I was doomed to watch you die every day for eternity, and then _finally_ I caught the bastard causing it all. When you died that last time, when the day didn’t start over and you didn’t come back, I thought it was real. I thought you were dead for six months and there wasn’t anything I could do about it,” Sam explains, his voice softening with each word. “When it was all over, it had only been a day for you. I spent three months watching you die and six months thinking you were dead, and then the next day it was like none of it ever happened. Everything went back to normal, except for me.”

Fuck, those final words punch through Dean with so much force he can barely breathe. Such a simple phrase with so much meaning behind it, such a short sentence to summarize everything Dean has felt since waking from the dream. That’s exactly what happened; he woke up and everything went right back to normal, right back to how it always was, except for him.

“Nine months is a lot different than forty years, Sam,” Dean adds, because he’s still feeling defensive and not ready to give it up, “you had a tough year, I get that, but don’t compare that shit to what happened to me. I had kids, dammit.”

“So tell me about them,” Sam insists, keeping his distance on the cot, “Jeremy, right? And a daughter?”

Hearing his son’s name spoken out loud by someone other than himself sends a cool, unsettling chill down his spine. He thought hearing someone else say it would validate their existence, would legitimize all the crap he’s been through in the last few weeks and the hopelessness he’s feeling now. Instead, Dean feels cheated; robbed of their lives and everything that came with it. He wants to punch his brother in his stupid face and curl up into a ball in the corner.

“Jem,” he corrects, even though Sam isn’t technically wrong. He just doesn’t know what else to say, “I thought you said Cas told you everything.”

“He told me a lot, yeah,” Sam says, shifting his weight and leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, “But he was still kind of drunk and really upset with himself.  He thinks he fucked up.”

Dean laughs bitterly at that, nodding, “Damn right he did. I don’t know what he was thinking, but if that prick tries kissing me again I’m gonna kick his ass.”

Sam stiffens at Dean’s words, eyes narrowing as if it will help him see Dean more clearly. When he tilts his head, Dean realizes they must not have been talking about the same thing. Fuck.

He doesn’t get it. What else would Sam be talking about? He can’t think of many other ways Cas has fucked up recently, not that the angel has a record for being…well, an angel, but it’s either that or failing to erase the memories from his head, and Dean doesn’t think that’s what they’re talking about here, either. Sam’s face just continues to soften and gets that Dr. Phil look.

“He kissed you,” Sam says, and it’s definitely not a question, “I swear, you two are more emotionally stunted than rocks. I’m sorry, Dean, that’s not what I thought he was going to do.”

“Wait,” Dean blurts, then steadies himself for a moment. He thought he was confused enough before, but now he really has no idea what’s going on, “what the fuck are you talking about?”

Sam runs an unsteady hand through his sweat-damp hair, eyes dropping to the ground and staying there. He looks nervous now, guilty of something, and all of the worst case scenarios are flying through Dean’s head at top speed. Fuck, what did his brother do?

“I really think you and Cas need to talk about this,” Sam asserts, popping his knuckles. The sound echoes in the cylindrical room and sends a twitchy shiver up Dean’s spine. He fucking hates that noise. “I told him to talk to you, that’s it.”

“Talk to me about _what_ , Sam? Jesus, can you be any more cryptic?” Dean spits, completely losing his patience. He’s been dangling on the edge of his rope, been suspended above a dark and vast canyon with the sweet promise of death for far too long. He sincerely can’t handle this, can’t have this conversation for much longer before he completely lets go and just _falls_.

It doesn’t even have to be Michael. He’ll settle for whatever respite he can find, be it something sharp or his gun or hanging from his own goddamn belt. Sure, the angels will just keep bringing him back, but maybe if he’s lucky they’ll bring him back somewhere better and far away from the trio keeping him prisoner here. Anywhere with a beach would do – no, scratch that - he’ll take going to Antarctica over coming back here at this point.

“Just – God, okay – look at it like this: imagine what happened to you happened to Cas instead. Cas wakes up and then suddenly just _hates_ you, and all you know is that he was married to you in the dream.”

Dean ponders that for a moment. “I don’t hate Cas.”

“Even if that’s true, that’s definitely not how you’ve been acting. Whenever he’s around, you get all mopey and stare at him and scowl. He said you called him _inhuman_ when he offered to help, and that he basically told you he has ‘strong feelings’ for you and you ignored him,” Sam huffs, losing his patience as well, and Dean can tell he’s trying not to roll his eyes. “I told him to talk to you, to work out whatever shit is going on between to you two, because right now it’s seriously fucking everything up and I _need_ you, Dean. I need you to have my back.”

Bitter, acrid resentment crawls up his throat like bile, every hair on the back of Dean’s neck is on edge. Sam doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s talking about, because Dean sure as shit didn’t call Cas inhuman and he’s pretty fucking sure he’d remember Cas confessing feelings for him.

“So what, you and Cas are best friends now? Braiding each other’s hair and shit?” Dean growls, switching from defense to offense in a matter of seconds, “you need me to just _get over_ forty years of my life so I can help _you_ out?  Fuck you, Sam.”

“I’m not – dammit, Dean, I’m not asking you to get over it, I’m asking you to _deal_ with it. There’s a reason why you were with Cas in your dream instead of anyone else, right? You didn’t dream you were married to Lisa or Cassie, and that seems pretty fucking significant to me. Think about it, will you? I spent more time listening to a drunk angel groan about you in that motel room than I did working on the actual case.”

_It’s all I ever think about, Sam._

The hollowed out void that Famine brought to the forefront weeks ago seems to return of its own accord, filling Dean’s insides with shadows and sharp-biting frost. He can’t believe he’s reached this point so many times now, the feeling of absolute futility and defeat. He’s filled with so much humiliation that it hurts; Sam knows his deepest secret and is making him feel like an idiot for it, talking down to him like Dean’s some kind of inept jackass. Sam wasn’t there, he didn’t experience that life the way Dean had and he’ll never know the depth of Dean’s loss.

So his brother spent nine months in a mystery spot, lost Jessica, but those things just don’t compare. Dean grew old, aged with every passing day and watched thousands of sunsets in that world. Every time he kissed Cas’ lips or held his hands, the skin connecting was a little older each time, more experienced, more in love. He cradled babies with those hands, rubbed their little heads and sang them songs until they were too old to appreciate the gesture. He woke to the smell of lavender and drank cinnamon milk when he couldn’t sleep.

Dean realizes a moment too late that it’s not fair to compare their pain. Guilt obliterates the last of his resolve, making him feel sick for thinking of Jessica or his brother that way. Sam loved Jess, and she was a real human being with hopes and dreams, a family that loved her, and she was the closest thing to normalcy that Sam will ever have. She’s not a tally mark used to judge the winner of a sick game for who’s been the hurt the most.

He knows Sam means well, knows that Sam can probably relate more than Dean is giving him credit for, he just can’t continue this conversation. Thinking about the possibility that Cas might have feelings for him – the real Cas – is all at once too much and not enough. Dean can’t take another migraine so soon after the last one.

But Sam isn’t going to let this go, he’s going to keep pushing until Dean finally snaps and says things he’ll regret, things about that life he’d rather keep to himself. Dean’s gotta snuff this conversation out before it goes any further.

“If I want to say yes to Michael, then that’s my goddamn choice.”

The muscles on Sam’s face flex as he clenches his jaw and shakes his head. “Well you think maybe you could take a half-second and stop trying to sacrifice yourself for a change? Maybe we could actually stick together?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Sam pushes, standing from the cot. He steps closer, eyes darkening and widening in a way that makes Dean feel sick. “Dean, seriously, tell me. I want to know. It’s because of the dream, isn’t it? Admit it.”

Sam’s accusations are partially true: yeah, obviously Dean is losing his mind, unable to function much at all these days thanks to one botched hunt in Malta, but there’s an underlying truth that’s been there a lot longer than Dean’s been messed up. Sam is strong in many ways, less emotionally stunted than Dean is and smart enough to run the whole damn country, but they’re more alike than either of them are willing to admit. They’re weak when it comes to family, when it comes to love and all the accompanying bells and whistles, when it comes to humanity and all of the people that includes. They’re angry, bitter, both brimming with emptiness. It’s only a matter of time before Sam buckles under the pressure and spreads his legs for Lucifer.

“I just…I don’t believe,” Dean breathes, his shoulders slumping as the words drag themselves out of his mouth.

“In what?” Sam asks, but the look on his face means he already knows.

“In you.”

҉     ҉     ҉ 

Dean sits alone in the silence, lights dimmed, staring up into nothing as he idly daydreams about Nebraska. He’s not thinking about anything in particular, just flashes here and there of his favorite moments.

It’s easier than thinking about Cas, about the stuff Sam had said before he left.

Because it’s all bullshit, right? He never called Cas inhuman. And, Christ, if Cas had confessed any sort of feelings for Dean after the dream, there’s no way the conversation wouldn’t have immediately devolved into a needy make-out session. Dean’s just that desperate.

They’ve hardly even been alone together since Malta. The only time that really comes to mind is when Sam was sobering up and Cas was trying to comfort him, but the angel was barely able to speak a full sentence before Dean walked out in need of fresh air.

They spoke briefly outside that diner, too, when Cas offered to heal him and make everything better. That’s when Cas was supposed to stick the industrial-sized Band-Aid on his brain and call it good. But they didn’t speak much then, either.

He replays the scene over and over in his head, as well as he can considering the tangled mess he has to work with, and then it hits him, hard.

_You’re not even fucking human._

_I wouldn’t have rebelled if I didn’t also feel so strongly._

Holy fuck, is that what Sam was talking about?

Is it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. - I am changing my username on here and on my Tumblr. I will be doing it tomorrow, and my username here and on Tumblr will match. Just so everyone knows when it happens and isn't confused.


	7. Giving Me Wings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Giving Me Wings - The Frames
> 
> Trigger warning for self harm and some violence.
> 
> Please note the author name change! Lovely_Phrase is now BoMarlowe, so future fics and chapters will be under that name instead.

Though the room is mostly bare, Dean searches for something he can use to kill himself.

It’s not about suicide, not really. He just can’t take another moment locked in the panic room, can’t listen to the silence reverberate around him on an endless loop anymore. The way he figures it, he can give himself a quick out and have the angels upstairs bring him back somewhere else and then direct him to Michael.

The more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense. Dean can’t exactly send out a signal to them on his own, not with the branding on his ribs, but this way he can talk to someone directly and get to where he needs to go without having to use the back roads, so to speak.

His plan isn’t flawless, but Dean isn’t sure if that matters. Everything is so fucked up in his head right now that he’s lucky he can even focus on what he’s doing. Combined with the fact that he’s never really had to think about how to kill himself before, this whole ordeal is becoming much harder than it originally seemed.

Sure, Dean’s thought about death, a lot. Okay, maybe more than a lot. Death has been on the forefront of his mind ever since blood and flame swallowed his mother whole and normalcy came to screeching halt. His life jack-knifed at four years old and death has never been further than he could reach. Not to mention Dean has _actually_ _died_ , which does have the tendency to make it difficult to think about anything else.

He just didn’t think suicide would ever be part of the equation.

There’s always been something worth fighting for, always. Even in his darkest hours, Dean has never had to look further than the seat to his right to know that there are still reasons to keep going, to never give up. Sam and Dean against the world, even when the world outnumbers them seven billion to two.

Which begs the question: why is Dean giving up now?

That’s what Sam thinks, anyway. His little brother honestly believes Dean’s attempts at self-sacrifice are a sign of failure. Dean’s not used to being the weak link in the chain, he’s usually the one reinforcing everyone else and letting them use his heart as a step-stool. Failure isn’t letting Michael take over the reins, not at this point in the game. Failure is doing nothing while the world is obliterated; is kicking up the foot rest and sipping on a beer instead of doing the one thing his body was apparently made to do.

Besides, it’s not like there’s going to be much left to live for when it’s all over. What exactly is on the agenda after the apocalypse? It’s not like there’s a sequel to the Bible with instructions on how to live appropriately after Michael and Lucifer throw their little soiree two thousand years in the making.

Maybe this is Dean’s version of running away. Sam’s done it countless times, leaving Dean behind whenever he can’t handle the pressure of being a Winchester. It’s almost not fair that Dean’s not allowed to do the same, that he’s always the springboard and never the jumper when it comes to getting away from their unfortunate lineage. It was like that with Dad too; running away in the most literal sense and leaving Dean in charge of everything else, only coming back to recharge and jump off again.

But right now, none of that matters. Dean has made his decision, but even that choice is starting to waver. He can’t stop thinking about the things Sam was saying, whether or not they were true, if Cas might actually feel the way Dean wants him too. He tries to make sense of it, looks at everything from the fresh perspective Sam offered just minutes ago, but it doesn’t come together neatly in his mind like the puzzle it’s supposed to be.

Dean’s been an asshole to the angel, that’s true. It’s a fair accusation because it’s not like Dean’s made any effort to be friendly these days. He simply can’t, not when the guy was his husband in another life, not when they loved each other so fiercely and unreservedly. He can hardly look into those wonderfully blue eyes without wanting to kiss him, can’t be near him without wanting to pull him in closer.

_You didn’t dream you were married to Lisa or Cassie, and that seems pretty fucking significant to me._

Seems pretty fucking significant to Dean too, actually.

He hadn’t thought of it in those terms. Dean never compared Cas to anyone else, never thought about why Cas had been chosen by the Djinn for the dream - but that’s not really how it works, and he knows it. The Djinn just picks out bits and pieces from the person’s mind and constructs an entire world around a single desire. He’s never been honest with himself about what he really wants, doesn’t let himself entertain certain ideas that he knows will only end in heartache. He told Cassie the truth, and she laughed him out of her bedroom. Lisa was a nice thought, but they never amounted to more than anything than one particularly bendy weekend.

Aside from Sam, Cas has been the most constant presence in Dean’s life. He pulled Dean out of Hell, left a permanent mark on his _soul._   

If he’s being honest, those little games of eye-tag and lingering touches were a lot more than just being friendly. He doesn’t think they were ever just friends, not from the moment they squared off in that old red barn when Dean stabbed him in the chest.

And now the angel knows the extent of Dean’s affections, has seen every touch and kiss between them in that life. Cas even told Sam the details, about his children, took him to their home in Nebraska and confessed to feeling things Dean never thought would be possible.

The problem with that, though, is Dean can’t seem to shake the sickening embarrassment and fear that it’s all some kind of joke, an elaborate hoax at his expense.

Which is why he’s still searching for something to end his life as quickly and painlessly as possible.

He doesn’t find much. The room is designed specifically for safety, and the most dangerous thing he can find is a thumb tack beneath the desk and against the wall. He stares at it, analyzing the sharpness of the pin, wondering if it’s enough to get the job done. Probably not.

“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin _?_ ” He mutters, pressing the pad of his finger against the tip. Ha, he’s so fucking funny.

It’s times like these that make Dean wish he had paid better attention in school before dropping out. He wasn’t all that interested in biology, and only stayed in anatomy long enough to chuckle at the reproductive system diagrams. If he had done his homework instead of laying salt lines and watching the door with a gun in his hand, he might actually be able to make this stupid plan work.

At best, Dean figures he can scrape the thumb tack along the inside of his wrist until he has a steady flow going, assuming it will work at all. He can’t exactly stab himself with it, and even if he did, it would take pretty much forever to bleed out from that tiny of a hole. Dean’s not a wimp, but stabbing himself in the neck repeatedly with a tiny pin would take much bigger balls than he’s currently carrying between his legs.

Well, here goes nothing.

Dean starts on his left wrist, applying enough pressure on the soft skin there to bring a string of blood to the surface.  It’s nothing impressive, just a thin line punctuated by swelling beads, none of which are big enough to drip. He winces at the pain – goddammit, it stings a lot more than he thought it would – and cusses at himself for being such a pansy. It’s not like he hasn’t cut his own arm before, not like he hasn’t been cut hundreds of times, but those were usually higher up on his arm in meatier, less sensitive areas.

He faced Roy’s shotgun at point blank range with a lot more courage than he’s showing now. He’s faced situations far worse and painful than this, situations in which he had zero control of the outcome, and yet he’s trembling now under the weight of the tack like he’s never bled before in his life.

Dean throws the stupid thumb tack across the room, listening to it ping and bounce off the wall before rolling in a half-circle across the floor.

He can’t do it, and it’s not even about the pain. Eventually either Sam or Cas will come down the stairs, find his dead body and freak out. Dean doesn’t think he can do that to them, not after the Hell Hounds and the mystery spot, not when everyone is already one foot off the edge.

One of the beads finally swells large enough, dripping down his forearm until he smears it away on his jeans. He hates that he’s such a coward, hates that he’s trapped in this room, forced to consider suicide as a legitimate alternative to dealing with the split halves of his brain.

Dean pokes at his wrist, watching as the blood flow speeds with every delicate press. He can hear them thudding around upstairs, no doubt coming up with more elaborate ways to convince Dean he’s wrong and needs to resist Michael. Sam most likely won’t be coming down again for a while, not after the way their conversation ended, but Cas might try to come in and talk about things Dean simply isn’t ready to discuss. If he ever hears the word _feelings_ again, he’ll probably…

…what, kill himself? Yeah fucking right.

Then an idea hits him, and despite not knowing how well it will actually work, he figures it’s a hell of a lot better than trying to scrape open his body with a thumb tack.

He pokes at his wrist again, coaxing the blood out carefully until he’s got a small but steady flow going. He rises to his feet, dips his fingers in the red, and starts working on painting a sigil on the metal cabinet beside him. Dean isn’t that excited about this plan either, but at least no one will have to deal with his dead body until the angels zap him back into existence.

By the time Dean’s finished with the sigil, which looks more like a messy kindergarten painting than anything else, the cut on his wrist is irritated and a bit itchy. Part of it has already scabbed over, and it’s with a humorless laugh that he realizes his plan to kill himself was never going to work. His wrists would have healed themselves before any major blood loss occurred without an actual knife or something to cut deeper than just the surface.

He just really, really hopes Sam isn’t the one to come down the stairs.

With a frustrated grunt, Dean kicks over the few items that are near him, skewing the chair and the lamp across the floor with a clang. He ducks behind the door of the cabinet, hiding himself and the drying, browning sigil, then waits.

He really shouldn’t be surprised that someone is at the door in a matter of seconds, but he finds himself flushed with a moment of _oh right, people care about me_ , before he hears his name being called through the door.

“Dean?”

It’s Cas’ voice, worried and breathy like he truly believes something could have harmed him inside the danger-proofed panic room. It hurts Dean to hear, reminds him too much of those days after the fall when his husband doted on his every single whim, when he treated Dean like a fragile creature that could skitter off at any moment. He has to fight the urge to reply, has to shove all those memories down and focus.

Cas calls his name a second time before opening the door, stepping in carefully and examining the disarray on the floor. His eyes are wide with worry, his chest rising and falling too quickly to be an angelic reaction. Dean falters for a moment, almost changing his mind, asking himself if he can really do this: can he blast the man he loves to Oz and hightail it out of here? Can he really do that to Cas?

The question answers itself when Dean says the angel’s name, catching his attention and pushing the cabinet door closed to reveal himself. They see each other for all of two seconds before Cas flicks his gaze toward the cabinet and is crushed with understanding. He sees what’s coming before it happens, accepts it instantly without a fight. He simply stands there with his arms dangling at his sides.

Dean doesn’t know what’s worse: the way Cas’ voice sounded like glacial rocks grating against the hull of a ship when he called Dean’s name, or the inconsolable look on his face when he realized Dean had callously tricked and betrayed him.

He has seen that look on Cas’ face before – when he awoke in a hospital bed with a familiar voice calling his name, before Dean had fallen in love with the wool pulled over his eyes. That Cas had been horrified at the thought that Dean wouldn’t remember him, wouldn’t want him in the same way after the fall, and it’s the same level of heartbreak he sees before him now.

Dean slaps his hand against the sigil, banishing Cas and that _look_ into oblivion.

When the white, blinding light fades and the room returns to normal, he takes a minute to compose himself.

For a moment, all Dean can feel is disgust. He feels it for himself, feels it for being such a shitty friend and lover, for doing that to someone he _needs_ so irrefutably. Cas didn’t even try to defend himself or run away, for chrissakes. Dean’s never done something like that before; he couldn’t shoot his father when he was possessed, couldn’t do more than throw Sam in the panic room when he was raging on demon blood. He’s never thrown someone he loves under the bus like that, and it _hurts_.

It’s only out of overwhelming guilt that Dean pushes forward with his plan. He doesn’t want that atrocious act to be for nothing, can’t do that to someone and then just sit there and let the plan go to waste.

He steps out of the panic room cautiously, peeking up the stairs just in case someone else heard the commotion. He hears nothing, sees nothing, and though that might have worried him under different circumstances, Dean takes the lack of motion graciously as he pulls his coat on over his shoulders. He doesn’t have his keys, doesn’t think he could start the Impala without attracting unwanted attention anyway, so he crawls out through the cellar doors knowing he has a long walk ahead him in more ways than one.

 ҉     ҉     ҉

Dean’s convinced that all these religious nuts really are off their rockers. He knew that anyone who bought into all that horse shit had to be at least a little crazy, but the only people he can find that might be able to help look like they need to be committed.

First was the elderly man crouched down along the sidewalk with a cardboard sign warning of the impending apocalypse. Dean had approached him eagerly, asking him to pray for the angels to come, but the man offered only a toothless cackle. His other attempts were similar, asking people to pray for him who had no idea who Dean was, ignoring the laughter and the leers, wondering why in the fuck he ever thought this was a good idea in the first place.

He thinks again of Cas, and what he would give to see the angel one more time before he gives himself over to Michael.

Would Dean kiss him? Maybe – he’s not sure about anything anymore. Several weeks ago, the answer would have been a firm and resolute no, but now that his lips still tingle from that drunken encounter, it’s hard not to want that feeling again. Dean keeps asking himself what it means that Cas _knew_ before it happened, but he has to push those thoughts away and far before they completely consume him.

He’s starting to lose sight of the end goal. He’s not even sure why he’s still out here in search of blissful ignorance when there might be some hope on the home front after all.

Dean hears the man before he sees him, tall and dark-haired with a dedicated beard and louder than the cars rumbling down the street. The guy has a Bible in his hand and he’s assuring the unaffected bystanders that he’s been sent to deliver a message, standing outside of a bar. It’s a weird location, yet strangely fitting for his purpose. The guy isn’t unlike the others, though he does look cleaner and better put together, and Dean thinks he might have actually found what he’s been looking for.

Tired from his previous, horrifically failed attempts, Dean gets right to the point. “I’m Dean Winchester, do you know who I am?”

He half expects to get a strange glance or a laugh in return, but the man immediately goes rigid as his eyes widen into bright full moons. “Dear God,” the guy says, look unwavering, awed into stillness.

It’s a strange thing to be revered by someone he doesn’t know, but Dean’s not in the mood to explain himself or play reluctant hero now. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he breathes, more to himself than to the man, his own sense of shock rolling through him, “listen, I need you to pray to your angel buddies and let them know that I’m here.”

The man says nothing, simply dropping to his knees on command with his Bible pressed firmly between his palms. His eyes close, face tilted upward toward the sky, and the sight makes Dean’s stomach twist. He’s no better at being obedient than he is watching blind obedience happen right in front of him.

The moment the man opens his mouth and starts praying, Dean’s heart skips; it’s hard to breath, his body starts tingling like there’s no blood in his system at all. He’s afraid, suddenly aware that this choice is wrong, so very wrong, and he’s about to cross a line he can never come back from.

“You pray too loud.”

The voice comes out of nowhere, and for a moment Dean suspects it came from himself. Everything seems loud to him now, echoing and hypersensitive in his blood-rushed eardrums, but he recognizes the voice too well for it to be his own.

Dean turns on his heels and sees Cas standing there beside them, dropping one hand to the praying man’s shoulder. The guy’s body goes limp and he falls to the sidewalk, slack face red and glowing from the neon lights in the window. Dean has barely more than a few seconds to register what’s happening before Cas is clutching the collar of his jacket and practically throwing him into the nearby alleyway.

He’s slammed back first into the brick, head bouncing off the wall behind him in a way that leaves him feeling dizzy. Dean thinks it’s going to stop there, that the angel just wanted to yell at him out of the view of the street, but then Cas’ hands are adjusting on his jacket and he realizes the angel is nowhere near finished with him. “What are you, crazy?” Dean groans, futilely resisting the weight keeping him pinned against the wall.

When he’s tossed across the width of the alley, body colliding with the opposite wall as if he were no more than a ragdoll, he remembers that despite Cas’ usual docile demeanor, Dean is pitifully outmatched.

“I rebelled for _this_?” Cas yells, voice deep and vibrating through Dean’s skull. Dean stumbles to the ground like a lopsided foal, trying to catch himself on tired hands, hissing when the wound on his wrist splits on impact. He’s jerked back almost instantly when Cas single-handedly grabs him and lifts him up, shoving him into the wall once more.

Then Cas is punching him, once, twice, boring into Dean’s face with a clenched, solid fist. “So that you could _surrender_ to _them_?” Cas continues, and Christ, the angel’s voice is sharpened with murderous intent. Dean’s too dizzy to notice whether he’s been slammed back into the same wall or thrown against the other, but his head bounces off the brick a second time, triggering lightning strikes of pain shooting through his brain and down his spine.

Fuck, it’s a migraine, bad enough that he barely realizes he’s bleeding from the mouth. His lip is split and burns like hell, his tongue bathing in a shallow pool of coppery spit. He tries to swallow it back, but finds himself doubled over when Cas starts in on Dean’s gut, literally punching the breath from his lungs.

“Cas, please.” It comes out as a pitiable request, a pathetic whimper, and Dean doesn’t even know if he means _stop_ or _more_. He’s in so much goddamn pain, his head is caving in on itself, and yet he still manages to derive a disgraceful sense of pleasure from the fact that Cas is here, Cas is touching him, and the warmth from the angel’s hands are enough to drive away the cold settled beneath Dean’s skin.

He tries to stop the attacks, tries to defend himself against the crackling power sparking along Cas’ fingertips, but Dean may as well be a moth batting its wings against a tidal wave. He’s boneless as he’s thrown around again, weak as his gulps of air come harder and interrupted by a sharp pressure piercing into his ribs. He’s held against the wall now, a single moment of respite with their bodies pressed together, Cas barely an inch away from his face with a snarl on his lips.

“I gave _everything_ for you, and this is what you give to me?” Dean hears, his eyes half-lidded and moistened by the heat of Cas’ breath. Then he’s dragged out into the middle of the alleyway, forced to support himself on weakened legs. He’s knocked back by another blow to the face, then kicked so hard in the chest that he flies backward into a chain-link fence.

Dean hates that he can’t protect himself, that he’s no more than a mewling kitten in a burlap sack, but he doesn’t think he could lift a hand to hurt Cas anyway. Using that sigil against the angel had been challenge enough.

He finally has a moment to spit out the gathering blood in his mouth, coughing and wheezing as his lungs fill fully for the first time since Cas showed up. Dean looks up from the ground where he’s lying, watches as Cas comes steadily closer with slow, rumbling steps.

This position is familiar, he realizes; how long has it been since that first week back from the dream, anyway?

Cas looms over him, a mighty presence backlit by streetlamps and headlights, glaring down at Dean with cold, shielded eyes. The migraine bolts around in his head like a ricochet bullet, so fast and serrated with each strike that Dean can’t bring himself up to his feet. He’s completely at the angel’s mercy, accepting his fate, ready to die or have his mind scrubbed clean or whatever Cas has planned as the finale to this thorough beating.

But Cas just stands there, staring, hands at his sides like he did in the panic room. The only difference now is that the angel’s hands are balled tight, knuckles white and spattered with blood, and Dean’s tired of waiting for the final blow.

“Do it,” Dean spits, ignoring the steady flow of blood coming from his opened wrist and bruised lips. It’s happening again, the confusion between the bridged realities, made worse by the migraine and the dejected, end-of-the-rope mentality he’s been dangling from since Malta. Man or angel, love or rejection, Dean doesn’t care to differentiate anymore.  “Just do it!”

When Cas steps closer, Dean flinches. He doesn’t know what Cas plans on doing to him, but he knows it’s probably going to hurt. He braces himself, but then the angels’ hand taps on Dean’s shoulder and the splitting pain ebbs away, dissipates like fog swept away in a wind. He can feel his body heal, the split lip and wrist knitting together seamlessly, the aches and bruises soothed by a calm, cooling balm.

The confusion is gone. Completely. Dean hasn’t felt this clear headed since Heaven, when death provided that welcome, temporary reprieve. He’s afraid for a moment that all his cherished memories are gone, but a quick internal inventory reveals that everything is right where it should be. He remembers that dream life the way he remembers a favorite movie; savors all the beautiful details, quotes the best lines and come-backs, but can still tell the difference between the world around him and what he saw on the screen.

Dean would think he were dead again if it weren’t for the cold concrete beneath him and the warm, imminent presence still hovering above him.

He looks up at the angel then – knows it’s the angel and not the man, no blurred lines or flooded bridges anymore – and meets his gaze, eyes steady and unblinking.

“Cas?” Dean tries, still uncertain whether or not to prepare for the worst. He reaches his hand out, both a gesture and a flimsy barrier between him and the angel’s vengeance, and Cas takes it; softly at first, then rough as he pulls Dean forward until they’re awkwardly held together, half crouched on the ground and supporting each other’s weight.

“Dean,” Cas replies, simply and without inflection. Their mouths are mere centimeters apart, shallow breaths teasing each other’s lips.

Then one of them moves forward or they both do, bringing their teased lips together into a frenzied kiss, too fast and needy to be anything but poorly timed and off center. Dean doesn’t care, and judging by the way the angel leans further into the motion, Cas must not care too much either.

They find a stable rhythm fairly quick, matching each other’s pace with steadily increasing control and patience, mouths parting in unison as if they’d been doing this forever. Cas’ body, for the most part, remains stone still where he kneels over Dean, but his mouth seems to widen and deepen the kiss with every moan coaxed from between Dean’s lips. 

It’s finally through the victory of the kiss that Dean tastes sweet relief. He’s needed this for so long that his insides ached, heart dark and swollen like that of a lovesick corpse. It beats rhythmically enough now, drumming back to life in his chest, flooding his system with pulses of affection and warmth.

Dean reaches up with his free hand, clutching at the nape of Cas’ neck, fingers tangling in the soft hair. The movement shifts their weight and they slip to the ground, Dean’s head thudding against the concrete and gravel. It doesn’t hurt, not when Cas’ arms slowed the fall, and it’s oddly reminiscent of the hard truck bed he remembers so fondly in that other life; Cas above him – all around him, really - the weight of his body a comfort rather than confinement.

The hand on Cas’ nape slips to cup the side of the angel’s neck as they break apart and catch their breath, panting and tangled around each other. Their eyes meet again, each pair filled with boundless questions for the other, but they’re stopped short of speaking when something clanks and clashes behind them.

Cas turns minutely, almost uninterested in the distraction, but Dean pushes himself upright and clutches the sleeve of Cas’ coat. It’s the bearded man Dean had asked to pray for Michael, awake now and stumbling clumsily into the trash bin against the wall. The man is worried, keeping his eyes on them both in an effort to convey his intent to help. Cas merely smirks, directing his attention back toward Dean, kissing him gently with closed lips.

It’s not until Dean feels a familiar cot beneath him that he realizes the second kiss was a distraction, a minor gift so that Cas could zap them both back to the panic room without Dean’s fearful objections. He trusts Cas, really does, but he views that angelic teleportation crap the same way he does getting on a plane: if God wanted man to fly, He would have given them wings.

He laughs at the thought, then laughs that he’s right back in the room he spent hours trying to escape. It’s light and comes easy, a weight lifted from his burdened chest, growing louder the longer it goes on. It feels so good to laugh, to be kissed, to be close to the one he loves; and yeah, man or angel, dream or reality, he loves Cas too much to let him go just yet.

Cas laughs for a moment then too, but only briefly before dropping his lips to the bolt of Dean’s jaw, kissing along the stubble and resting his weight more firmly against his chest. It feels nice, familiar and lovely; the corners of Dean’s lips perk up into a hesitant smile and he doesn’t fight it, just lets the angel soothe all the ragged edges and flayed bits of his once broken heart.

Dean tugs gently at the trench coat still draped over Cas’ shoulders until the angel gets the hint. Cas pushes himself up long enough to pull it off his arms, dropping it to the floor and returning his attentions to the flushed skin of Dean’s neck and chest.

When Cas nips at the sensitive pulse at the hollow at Dean’s throat, Dean bucks his hips and gasps at the feeling, his hands tightening their hold on Cas’ sides. It’s then Dean realizes he can feel everything through the layers of pants between them, how excited they both are and _ready_. He glides his hands down from Cas’ sides to cup the angel’s ass, thumbs catching on the belt, forcing their bodies closer together.

Cas pauses long enough to whisper something against the dip behind Dean’s ear, but he doesn’t quite catch what the angel had said. Dean’s about to ask about it when they’re stopped by a heavy, grating groan of metal. The panic room door swings open, but all Dean can think is that he’s pissed about a second interruption so soon, desperate to keep the momentum going with the man on top of him. He darts his eyes toward the door impatiently, ready to tell the person to fuck off, but is crashed back into reality when he sees Sam standing there awkwardly with his jaw dropped somewhere on the floor.

“Hello, Sam,” Cas says, as if their current position is entirely normal. Sam closes his mouth and runs a shaky hand through his hair, shifting his weight to his heels.

“Uh, hey Cas,” Sam starts, looking toward the walls, _away_ from the two of them with painful obviousness that it almost makes Dean laugh. He would, too, if he weren’t so goddamn embarrassed. “I see you guys, uh, talked things out.”

Dean twitches at that, suddenly aware of exactly how fucked up their predicament is. He’s been so flooded with adrenaline and fear, with the rush to do _something_ , he didn’t even realize he’s been making out with the angel without actually discussing why that might be.

Cas seems unaffected by Sam’s statement, but the silence speaks loud enough for the both of them. Sam’s eyes widen in understanding, narrowing in on them still tangled on the cot, shaking his head in what Dean assumes to be disbelief. “You haven’t talked at all, have you?”

No, because Dean allowed his body to do the talking for him, his default method for handling situations his heart can’t dissect with words.

Cas says nothing, but moves himself so that he’s no longer directly on top of Dean, offering his hand out to help Dean up so they can both sit upright. Sam sighs, shoving his hands in his pockets then, stepping backward through the doorway. “Well, I’m glad you’re back, Dean,” Sam says, the underlying message stronger than the spoken words. _I’m glad you didn’t say Yes_.

“Me too,” Dean finally offers, a little surprised to find that he actually means it. He’s relieved, the panic gone from his system, thankful to be back at Bobby’s instead of clinging to the ankles of an archangel.

It’s quiet for a minute, the three of them letting the words sink in as they bask in the welcome silence. Then Sam takes another step back, closing the door, leaving Dean and Cas alone together once again.

Dean is scared despite the angel’s comforting presence. He doesn’t want this to be a mistake, doesn’t want to find out it was all some ploy to get Dean back in the panic room without resistance. Cas must sense his rising terror, because he pulls Dean close and kisses the sweat-damp bangs pressed against his forehead.

“I am sorry, Dean,” Cas says, keeping them close together, “I am sorry you lost something so precious to you.”

Dean bites the inside of his cheek, hoping the minor pinch will be enough to distract him from the greater pain welling beneath the surface. He’s not sure exactly what Cas is talking about, be it the dream itself or something more specific like his children or the house. He’s sorry, too, more than he let himself acknowledge, but he doesn’t know what to say.

When Dean doesn’t reply, Cas continues. “I cannot give you that life. I would if it were possible, if I had that kind of power. I am limited, Dean, and I am sorry.”

“No, Cas,” Dean starts, his voice wavering a bit more than he’d like, “that’s not…I’m not expecting that, okay?”

Cas seems confused by that admission, tilting his head slightly as he stares into Dean with owlish eyes. He doesn’t know how to explain it to the angel, doesn’t know how to clarify what he means so that it makes more sense. Of course Dean wants that life back, would give almost anything to see his beautiful children or rest beside his graying husband, but he’s still _Dean_ , dammit. He still needs to protect Sammy, still has a lingering sense of belonging to this world that he couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried. It’s what kept him from truly taking the plunge, what sparked the sudden sense of wrongness when that man kneeled and started to pray.

Beyond that, Dean had already accepted the fact that he’d never get that life back. He wouldn’t have been so hopeless or ready to say yes if he hadn’t. He would have tried to find a way back long ago.

The reminder burns in Dean’s chest, his heart thudding to the rhythm of his racing thoughts. He’ll never have that life back. Never.

Cas shifts beside him, running a careful hand over Dean’s back. “I can still remove the memories if you would like me to do so.”

Dean can hear the sadness in the angel’s voice as he makes the offer, knowing what erasing those memories would mean for the both them. It would be easier, he thinks, to simply remove the life he lived with Cas and return everything to normal. He wouldn’t have to know what he’s missing, wouldn’t be haunted by their absence, but Dean doesn’t think he can do that, either. He wants to keep them where they are even if it means a harder life, even if it slows him down. He’s that selfish.

“Nah,” Dean says, making a weak attempt at being lighthearted, “I’ll hold onto them, for now.”

Cas nods, his hand slowing over Dean’s spine, “I thought you might prefer to forget. You’ve been quite unhappy.”

Dean remembers what Sam had said earlier, about the possibility Cas misinterpreted his behavior as something completely different than what was actually happening. It makes sense, Cas was never good at reading human emotion, and the realization makes him huff another small laugh. “You thought I was upset because we were married in the dream, didn’t you?”

Cas nods. “You never seemed to mind my presence before. It was the only conclusion that seemed logical.”

“Your presence bothered me, yeah, but it wasn’t like that,” Dean tries to explain, letting his head drop to Cas’ shoulder, “seeing you reminded me of it, and it hurt. I, uh…I missed you, and I didn’t know how to handle that.”

Cas is understanding, and Dean is grateful that he doesn’t have to go into further detail. Hashing this all out now is uncomfortable enough, especially on the heels of getting his ass kicked by the angel, but Dean’s a now-or-never kind of guy and he wasn’t having all that much success with _never_.

“Do you still intend to say yes to Michael?” Cas asks, voice barely above a whisper.

“No, Cas. I think I’ll be okay as long as I have you,” Dean admits, feeling his cheeks flush with embarrassment.

Cas takes a deep, unnecessary breath. “I cannot always be with you, Dean. There is much for us to do in the near future, and I will not be able to take you to all the places I go.”

Dean laughs, then dares to kiss the angel’s collar bone. Cas doesn’t shoo him off or shy away, so he does it again, letting his lips linger a little longer. “Not like that, idiot. I mean as long as we have _this_ , I’ll be alright,” he laughs, gesturing between them.

“Oh, I see.”

It was said with such little emotion that Dean begins to worry, wondering if he made a wrong assumption about what just happened. “If you want that, I mean,” he backtracks, pulling away from Cas to put a few inches of space between their bodies, “Or, you know, whatever.”

“Dean,” Cas smiles, closing the gap immediately by scooting closer and taking Dean’s hands in his own, “you have seen only one alternate life we’ve shared. I have seen hundreds of paths we could have taken, hundreds of potential eventualities from the moment I gripped your soul in Hell. I have loved you in a hundred different lives, in a hundred different ways, all since our first meeting. I cannot predict what will come of free will, but I believe God chose me to raise you for a reason.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Cas insists, so confidently that Dean actually believes it.

He’s tired, so drained from everything he’s been through today that he lays himself down on the cot, head resting heavily on the flat pillow. Cas runs a hand over Dean’s thigh, gentle and protective, then rises from the cot. Dean doesn’t want to be left alone right now, but he swallows his fear and knows they can talk about the rest later. He doesn’t really know what more there is to say, he doesn’t like to pick things apart too much, not like Sam, but he thinks it would help to have Cas to talk to when he’s really missing his kids. Cas saw the life, and Dean knows the angel would listen if needed.

His lids are heavy when Cas makes it to the door, but Dean keeps sleep at bay for another moment to ask, “we did good, didn’t we?”

They’d been old, holding hands on a porch swing overlooking the tree line in the distance the last time Dean asked that question, the final night they spent together before waking up in Sam’s blood-damp hands.

Cas stops and turns to Dean, smiling broadly. “We did,” Cas says, and Dean knows the angel remembers it too, “we did good, Dean. Real good.”


End file.
